Back Up
by LoweFantasy
Summary: When a band member quits the night before a concert, Atem's band is saved by the miraculous appearance of a girl who can replay anything she hears. As their world tour goes on, he finds himself falling hard, despite learning that her weird standards not only stop her from drinking coffee, but write him off as a romantic possibility. But is that hope he hears in the music she plays?
1. Godsend

Back Up

by LoweFantasy

1

Half way through their world tour, on the night before their New York concert, _Millennium Sands_ main guitarist and back up vocalist rage quit.

"Can't we just put a recording of her on?" asked Joey in desperation.

"Talk about sucking the life out of the stage," grumbled Bakura. "It'll stop being 'listen to each other' and become 'keep up with a damn tape.' Besides," he gave them a blank, almost owlish look. "Do we even have any recordings of just her part?"

"Augh, can't they just tone down our track and boost hers? They can do stuff like that, right?"

And since neither Joey or Bakura was seeing the point, Atem dropped yet another complication: "These people paid for an all live concert. We give them a recording and Kaiba Corp will eat us alive."

On hearing the name of the Mothership of their ice-veined, merciless, draconic producer, Joey and even the fearless Bakura froze.

"Tell me you didn't tell him?" asked Joey. He only gave Atem the time to blink and open his mouth before he launched out of his chair and about his neck. "For the love of God, tell me you didn't tell him?!"

Bakura said nothing, though his expression darkened. Put together with his shock of white hair and hollow, too bright black eyes and it gave a striking impression of being waited on by a ghost. A none-too-friendly ghost.

"You expect me not to?" asked Atem, appalled, amazed.

"I'm begging you!"

"How the hell do you expect us to get a guitarist in thirteen hours-"

"Ten," interjected Bakura.

"-let alone get security to let them on stage? Get _off_ me, you're like a thousand pounds."

Lanky Joey melted to the ground. "Are you seriously asking me that after all we had to go through to get him to fund a world tour?" Joey curled his head beneath his hands and swore a few pretty, grumbled words before adding, "If he finds out Rebecca ran out-shit, the girl's got connections. And you know what a tight ass he is about quality reputation or whatever."

Never far, and probably attracted by Joey's none-too-quiet tone of panic, their buxom blonde manager stepped through their lounge door with a snap of Winterfresh bubblegum. "What's going on, boys?"

Just as Joey started up with a 'nuthan!' followed by a lame-brain explanation, Atem said over him, "Rebecca's run out."

If Atem thought that the entrance of their rarely frazzled manager would bring a drop of rational calm to the situation, he was wrong.

Her violet eyes popped and she all but slammed the door behind her.

"Please tell me you didn't tell Kaiba?" She was looking right at Atem.

"Why are you looking at me? We _should_ tell him, this is his investment and he can help us find-"

She broke him off with a loud, unlady-like snort.

"Seto Kaiba get off his high horse to help anyone? It's float or sink with that man, sponsor or not. We let him know, he won't even give us a chance to find another guitarist or vocalist, he'll have _Duelists_ in our place before you can say 'dickweed.'"

That made Atem pause. Joey made apoplectic noises of distress on the white carpeted floor, while Bakura's dark look turned to an unpleasant sneer.

"Ah yes," he murmured. "His precious, spoiled flower children."

Atem pinched the bridge of his nose, then moved said forefinger and thumb to rub the inside corners of his eyes. He could feel grit there, and maybe clumps of leftover eyeliner. "Fine. How do you propose we find someone without it getting to him, hmm?"

Manager Mai had moved to speak right as he said 'fine', cell phone rising, but wilted by the time Atem finished his sentence. Her perfectly painted face twisted into a scowl.

"I'm not some kind of drone, I got connections outside of my employer, twerp."

"Then why don't you look more confident?"

"It's just a hassle, okay?"

"Hassle!" cried Joey. "You're our manager! It's your job!"

"And what a fine job your doing," slid in Bakura in his usual dry undertone. "Rebecca could be in Tahiti, or Spain."

"Ugh, will you get off my back! Guitarists aren't that hard to find."

"She's not just a guitarist," shot Atem, yanking out a chair and sitting on it backwards. "Female sopranos stick out, even if they're doing back up. They're going to notice."

Mai all but clawed at her face. Atem was vaguely surprised that she didn't smear eye makeup down her cheeks. Swearing and stomping her heel into the floor, she went to a corner and took out her phone, barking for them all to shut up so she could make some calls.

Just as Mai started up on her first 'contact', a soft knock came at the door. It was so tentative that no one would have heard it if it weren't for the wood of the door being made of some tree that didn't believe in keeping quiet. Bakura and Atem exchanged glances. Joey was too busy writhing on the floor to notice.

"I'll get it." The chair creaked as Atem stood up.

He had a ready excuse in case it was one of Mai's assistants or some other gear in the Kaiba's massive music machine.

But he didn't recognize the girl. It took him a full ten seconds of registering her short brown hair and open features to recognize the hotel's logo on the breast pocket of her button up shirt.

"Um, this isn't really the time for room service. Can you come back?"

She flushed and gulped, but stood her ground. "Sir, did I hear correctly that you needed a guitarist?"

He inwardly groaned. Eavesdropper. Paparazzi. Number one dream crushers of America. "Look, whoever is paying to eavesdrop-"

"I can play. I can sing too."

"We're not for mediocre-"

"I'm not mediocre."

"Damn it, can you let me finish a sentence? Do you even know who I am?"

To his surprise, she just blinked. "Should I...?"

He shut the door in her face. A pre-recorded Kaiba head was cackling in his skull.

 _You crack-sniffers are just a bunch of wannabe's with a lucky one-hit wonder. I doubt anyone who's actually heard that song even knows who you are._

The knocking came at the door again, louder this time.

Bakura appeared next to him, leaning against the little decorative table besides the door. "Who is it?"

The knocking didn't stop.

Atem yanked open the door. "I said we're not-"

"Do you really have the luxury of turning me away without at least seeing what I can do?"

Atem stared at her. Any previous signs of nerves had vanished, leaving a stranger with some serious confidence or enough misleading arrogance to rival Kaiba. Her hands were fisted at her sides, her shoulders set back, and her sharp blue eyes not shivering once as she stared him down.

It probably would have helped her case more if she didn't have a toilet brush sticking out of the waist band of her apron.

Bakura, the freaking hyena, started to laugh.

"Oh Lord..." he shoved off the wall. "Let her in. I could do with some amusement after all this."

Atem slapped a hand to his face. He could hear his pride being flushed down the drain. What were the chances a guitarist as good as Rebecca would appear literally on their front doorstep just as they were in the straights for one? Heaven forbid if she could play more than _Gateway to Heaven_ and _Pirates of the Caribbean_ and sing like a high school chorister's pet.

Well, at least she wasn't ugly. Or fat. Maybe they could fake it, have her stand on stage for Rebecca-Atem shook his head at that thought, discomforted. He hated round about ways like that. Hell, he hated this whole situation of trying to keep it under wraps. If he knew anything, it was lying rarely ever helped-unless you were trying to get a girl into bed for a night. But that had always been Joey's thing.

"Fine." He stepped back. "But you're signing a contract after this. Even a word gets out and we're suing you."


	2. Atop the Minaret

2

Atem couldn't stop staring at her in the reflection of the green room mirror. He couldn't tell what he felt about all this, as the silence that had followed after each of her performances had stuck to his brain ever since the night before.

Tea Gardner, lowest totem of the janitorial pole, hadn't just been sufficient. She hadn't just been good. What she demonstrated to them was nothing short of genius. And at the young age of 18, barely old enough to be legal, she couldn't've had the time to just come up with that sort of talent.

Because, after only hearing a song once, she had not only been able to play the guitar and duplicate Rebecca's singing exactly, but she could play all their parts as well; Joey's drums, Bakura's keyboard, and Atem's cello (though it had taken the coaxing of his over-excited teammates to move Atem into letting her touch one of his precious instruments). Wondering if she was just some crazy fan who wasn't letting on her true identity, Atem had even let her listen to a recording on his phone of a song they hadn't even played for their manager yet. She had been able to reproduce every instrument in that as well.

"And I can play the other string instruments too," she added, like someone mentioning they had worked at McDonalds during their senior year of high school. "I haven't had enough time with woodwinds, though, nor the breath support for a good deal of the brass."

They went on for hours, playing song after song for her, growing more and more excited by her insane ability up until her angry employer came knocking with 'you're fired' in his palms like fireballs. One of the hotel's clients had found their room( on her list) had yet to been cleaned after the previous occupants had left.

Before the rest of the blood could drain from her face, though, Mai was onto her.

"Screw him, you're hired!"

With how hard the girl had pressed to audition for them, he had expected her to jump for joy or at least do a fair bit of squealing. When she simply gave them a wan smile and thanked them, however, he found himself suddenly irritated beyond belief.

"You could at least act a little excited," he snapped. "Do you have any idea how many people would-"

"-kill to have this opportunity?"

"Damn it, wait for me to finish!"

Bakura snickered. "Ooo, the Pharaoh's displeased."

"Pharaoh's been dissed," echoed Joey in the same, loud whisper.

But she hadn't repented. She hadn't started jumping or behaving in any way like a normal human being who had been given a sheer miracle. She simply asked for the paperwork and when and where to go for practice. Only when she was told they would be performing in the largest stadium of New York the very next night did she start acting rationally. She paled and clutched at the guitar she was still holding as she swayed a bit on her chair.

"T-t-tomorrow? I guess that explains why you sounded so desperate."

Instead of comforting him, however, it just irritated him further that she didn't even know they were performing.

 _Crack sniffing, one-hit wonders..._

Why had he been in such a hurry to tell that guy the truth?

And yet, when Mai brought up that they'd need her to prepare to leave the country as well, his irritation had vanished at the pale, straight-lipped smile Tea had given.

"Sounds good."

"You won't have to ask your parents or anything?" asked Atem.

Both Joey and Bakura had rolled their eyes to this and told him the girl was grown up, thank you very much. And no one cared what mommy or daddy thought anymore anyways.

"Have you left the country before?" asked Mai, who at least sounded as though she had noticed how odd the girl was acting.

"Nope," she had said with that same straight-lip smile. "Never even thought about it."

Which lead him to where he was now, staring at the side of her head as a seamstress desperately tried to adjust Rebecca's costume to Tea's much longer, more buxom frame. Tea stared off into the distance as though lost in thought, only coming out of it to continue a conversation Atem didn't really believe she was invested in. Her smiles were too mechanic, too measured.

The hairstylist, Otaga, followed his gaze in the mirror, hands hovering some six inches above his scalp to brace some hair as the gel dried. "Can't believe you're that lucky?"

Atem jerked his eyes away and shrugged, thinking too late that he should have said 'yes' or something easily as friendly. This was exactly why he tended to offended people.

"What's up?" Otaga asked.

"She just seems...look, if you were an young upstart musician and someone just offered you a chance to be part of an upcoming band on world tour, right off the bat, how would you act?"

"I'd probably pass out," said Otaga. "Why? She not acting right?"

"Just a little weird."

"And get this," Joey suddenly slid over from his own mirror as the girl on his head had gone somewhere for a hair dryer, his voice lowering to a whisper. "I just heard from Bakura that the girl's been living in the shelter the past three weeks. Was waiting on her first paycheck to get an apartment or something."

Otaga let out a low whistle, while Atem flinched. "She's a hobo?" Aw hell, don't tell him they'd just picked up a drug addicted wash out! Though his second reaction was to start raging at the cosmos for giving such a person such an unholy shitload of musical talent.

"Mai was surprised too. 'Parently the girl didn't have much to pick up. Said she left home soon as she could since there wasn't enough room for them all."

"But have they tested her?"

"Uh-"

Bakura slid in from the other side, dragging his own flummoxed hair stylist with him to join the gossip session. "Drug screening takes time and knowhow, dumbass. Even so, I doubt she's on anything. I'm pretty sure I'd know."

Joey and Atem exchanged glances and the taller blond let himself be pulled back onto his chair. Otaga blew on Atem's spiked hair before remembering he had a blow dryer for that job. For the next ten minutes all conversation ceased as multiple hair dryers hummed. By the time it was quiet enough for Atem to feel safe talking, Tea had been sat down between him and Bakura, dressed once more in just a shirt and jeans as the seamstress ran off to make the final adjustments on her costume. After all, this was just tech rehearsal. She stole a glance at him, but hurried to look elsewhere when she met his eye.

The hair stylist, a newer upcoming apprentice of Otaga's, combed through Tea's throat length hair, frowning.

"Gracious, girl, what did you do to your hair?" she gestured Otaga over to see somewhere on the back of her scalp. His black eyebrows arched in surprise and he pinched the strands before lifting them. When Tea gave an almost inaudible hiss of pain, Atem leaned over, curious.

"Frankfurters..." he muttered, shaking his head. "Guess you'll have to be careful, Julie. An A-line should do well enough."

"Exactly what I was thinking. I'm a bit afraid of putting chemicals on that though."

"What's wrong?" asked Atem, unable to stand the suspense any longer.

"Her hair got burnt," said Otaga curtly. "Burnt her scalp too, the poor thing."

Atem shot a glance over Tea to Bakura, their local recreational chemicals expert, but the keyboardist wasn't looking at him. Druggies always had weird wounds like that. It helped things make sense too, like why a girl of her talent was on the streets instead of in some University on a full-ride scholarship, or, even better, busy doing her own début as an artist.

After registering the brief blush to her face, Atem looked back to his own reflection, satisfied and uneasy all at once with his conclusion. He almost didn't hear her explanation.

"Someone sleeping in the bed above me caught their pillow on fire and sort of dropped it on me...it's no big deal."

"It's a big deal because dealing with bald spots are a pain," said Otaga. "Your hair follicles are going to be all the more likely to let go. So, like I said, Julie. Be careful."

What kind of kid left because there wasn't any room in their house? What, did she live in a freaking rabbit's nest? Had to be drugs.

While drugs were certainly not unheard of in the music industry, and almost everyone he knew of had at least used something recreational out of curiosity, it was heavily emphasized to keep the use under wraps and, most importantly, under control. All one needed was to get caught high in the wrong place at the wrong time to send their public rep down the toilet. Who wanted their kids to listen to music made by someone drugged out of their ever loving mind?

And if this girl had it bad enough to be kicked out of her house and living on the streets, that could hardly be called 'under control.' Not to mention he just didn't want to have to work with someone like that. Besides all the craziness that came along with mind-altering drugs, Atem was of the kind who couldn't see what was so fun about poisoning yourself or inhaling smoke to get a desired effect. Being on stage was high enough for him, and alcohol gave him any buzz he needed. Not to mention he did enough stupid things drunk to last him a life time. He didn't need hallucinations or whatever crap on top of that. Joey liked to wind down with a stick of MJ in the evenings and acted sane enough, even tooted the horn of it being beneficial to health, but Atem hated the smell of anything burning. He didn't even like incense. Bakura did whatever he wanted, but that was like his life motto, so no going there. Joey and him just agreed to give his bedroom a very wide birth.

"You have pretty eyes."

Atem flashed her a weird look. "Excuse me?"

Otaga's girl had turned Tea's head so she had had no choice but to look at Atem, so there was nowhere for her to run when he met her eye.

"Your eyes," she said again. "They're almost, like, reddish brown and the eyeliner really works with them. I mean, I always thought it looked kinda weird when guys wore make up, like, you know, but you pull it off really well."

Atem raised an eyebrow. "Thanks?" That's what happened when you got worked on by world-class stylists. You learned a bit about how to pull off make up without looking like a wannabe drag queen.

"And your skin's nice too. Are you, like, middle-eastern or something? Or in your family, I mean."

"My father was Egyptian," he said, still uncertain as to how to feel about her sudden interest in his appearance.

"Ah. That would explain those undertones to your music." She closed her eyes. "Your cello is like a voice singing on top of a minaret, calling the city to prayer. It's so...earnest and high, I love it. I hope you'll let me borrow your cello again so I can play it."

Heat gathered up against his neck and he found he couldn't help notice that her long lashes spread out like fans against a light cloud of freckles. He gulped. Crap, he had a weird thing for freckles. But it was what she said that hit him most.

Reviews had often mentioned the middle-eastern tones underlying their music, but they'd never given it the time Atem had hope they would, given how each time he played those certain songs he transported himself back to that hot day looking for his father when the high, keening call to prayer called out from above. Everyone had dropped to the ground around him, moved by the music to heaven, leaving him standing alone and tall.

Singing. She had called it singing. Those same strings were what moved him each time to singing himself.

Someone had finally noticed.

Even as he stared, both pleased and flustered, she started to hum his part in a song, and it wasn't _the_ song that Kaiba attested their success to, but one almost hidden in the back of their album, one in which Atem actually took up just his cello and forgot about singing.

A hot air balloon filled up in his gut and pushed it up against the bottom of his ribs.

"Alright," Otaga slapped his cheek with the side of a comb, as was his habit whenever he finished someone's hair and was ready to move on to touch ups. Atem was spun away from Tea and couldn't find the words to pick up a conversation again.


	3. Rehersals

**Thank you for the reviews. ^.^ I happily read them all with much smilies and smacking of toddler hands from jabbing at the keyboard.**

3

In the gaping buzz of stage lights in their open, empty stadium at seven that morning, they played with Tea for the first time. It was almost a relief when he heard the girl make mistakes their first time going through the song line up. Mai had more or less wilted in relief on hearing how well she did the part after no previous practice, so she had no mind to pick up the imperfections, leaving it all to Atem.

"You cracked when you jumped on _heady_ to _sky._ "

"Sorry."

"The guitar dragged when you came in on the chorus, are you sure you can sing and play at the same time?"

"Ugh, yeah. I think."

"Was that a squawk I heard on measure sixteen?"

"Dear Lord, Pharaoh," cut in Bakura after the sixth time of stopping mid-song for one of these corrections. "Are we going to be able to eat lunch? Or will we be playing up till seven?"

"Yeah, dude, what are you, Hitler?" added Joey, who was tapping the corner of his bass drum in annoyance.

Atem whirled on them. "Pardon, but I'm the only one that's treating her like she's _human_ , not some music god."

"Goddess," Tea all but whispered, her cheek twitching.

It stilled at his sharp glare. "Don't get cocky, girl. These are our songs, not yours." And before the others could give some other smart aleck comment, "From the top, on three."

On more songs than he cared, Atem just did lead vocals, as playing a cello beneath you could easily overcome a tenor voice. During one or two of the songs he kept his cello in hand to play in-between verses, or rather when he dropped his singing. Only in two was he singing and playing at the same time like he liked, and there was only one in which he played alone. Lucky for them, that particular song hadn't been requested for this concert, and Tea wouldn't be required to sing Rebecca's solo. That's all they would need, too: for some strange newbie to pass out mid-concert in front of x number thousands of people. Or was it just hundreds? Wait, he had forced himself to forget so he wouldn't think about. Stop it now, stop it now.

Ten thousand. The stadium held something like ten thousand people.

Damn it, now he'd have to start all over.

His right heel started doing that nervous jumping. If left too long, his calf would Charlie Horse on him during their performance.

Joey must have noticed this, for ten minutes before eleven, half-way through their last song, he brought it to a stop.

"You doing alright, man? Your heels doing the thing."

"I'm fine. I'll do some exercises right after, they always work."

Bakura made a low grunt of amusement. "Cute."

Atem shot him a look. "What does that mean?"

"Stuff," he stood from his keyboards and arched back, popping his spine several times. "I'm done."

"We're not finished! We can't just drop rehearsals-"

"I can do whatever a damn please." Bakura leaned one dark eye over his shoulder. "Or have you forgotten that?"

With that, Bakura ambled into the wings and vanished. A few techies watched on with impassive faces, eyes to Atem for the next directions. Past the stage lights he could make out movements in the stands, where a work crew made last minute preparations to the seats. Others were just finishing up folding out metal stands in the snot section, strait dab beneath the stage's nose.

Joey flung his arms back, cracking his back too. "Yeaaah, I think I'm done too, man. I'm starting to get so hungry its almost nauseating. Don't stress it, though, she sounds great," and he looked at Tea as he said this, flashing a toothy grin. She gave him a hesitant smile in return.

Atem just ran a hand over his eyes. His leg was already starting to hurt from the nervous heel. "Fine. It's not like I can stop you either."

"Aw, com'on, man. Don't be like that, it'll just make it worse for you. I'll see you back in the prep room? I hear lunch's gonna be extra stupendous."

"Yeah yeah, just go."

Atem didn't watch Joey go. For some reason it made his stomach twist tighter. Instead he looked out into the darkness, watching the shadows move around and the chairs click into place. The longer he looked, the easier it got to see the people.

With a sigh, he turned back to get his cello bow loosened and saw Tea with her guitar not two yards away from him. She froze like a deer caught in the headlights when she saw him.

"I'm up for more practice," she said.

"Sure you are," he said dryly, plopping down into his chair, his cello lain on its side besides it. "Everyone thinks you're Billy Joel perfect, so you might as well go get some food."

"But you're right. I'm not."

He pushed a dismissive sigh from his nostrils and picked up his bow. "You're fine." He kicked open his case. He liked to rosin the middle part of his bow, the part he used the most, before packing it for the day.

When her worn converse sneakers tapped into his view, followed by her gingerly laying her guitar out at his feet, he was in no mood for more socialization and debated on jabbing her in the gut with his bow.

"Could we practice more?" she asked.

"No point without everyone else." He brought his bow into position, pretending to blow on the horse hairs.

"Th-then could I...can I...play your cello? Just for a minute."

The unexpected, earnest plea in her tone came out of nowhere, catching him off guard. He looked up and caught sight of a little too-bright blue eyes. Now that he was looking closely at her, really looking at her not just staring in her general direction and eyeballing any clues for drugs, he found himself noticing for the first time how her hands, that she generally kept clenched to her sides, shook a little. From this close he could see shadows under the makeup she wore. If that wasn't enough to clue him in, she gave a nervous lick of her lips.

Great. Like it wasn't enough that he was getting stage fright.

For a split second, he fought with the urge to pounce on her weakness and scare her off, if for nothing else so she would leave him to brood with his cello in peace. But then, seeing his same apprehension brightening her eyes with tears moved him. The impression he had had of her as an arrogant, confident Mozart fell away, and once more he could see a girl with a dust of freckles across her nose.

Heaving a sigh, he handed her the bow he had been readying to stab her with. "Nervous?"

She flinched mid-reach for the bow and her hand recoiled. "You think I'm not?"

"Well-"

"I'm terrified."

Her fisted hands had come up to press against her breasts, emphasizing how tiny her voice had become. The bright eyes looked down, hiding tears from him.

"I've never played on a stage this big, and if that isn't bad enough I have to play songs that I've only heard the night before for a enormous, paying audience. I mean, I've sorta done this before, but it was the school talent show-that's really different-and then there's all this-frick, I still think something horrible is going to happen to me. I mean, this is got to be too good to be true, right? I mean, Mai just gave me a peek into how much I'll be earning and-and-" her voice cracked, her chin wrinkled, and a swollen bottom lip curled. Her next words definitely sounded broken. "I'm going to screw it up."

And as the first tear dropped to the stage, Atem just sat there stupidly, holding out his bow, blinking hard as though a spotlight had been flashed in his face.

"Shit..." he breathed.

Wrong thing to say. Tea started visibly curled back from him. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't-aw, crud, I'm such an idiot, I didn't mean-I'll be practicing, kay?"

"Tea-"

"-I'll be fine, I didn't mean that as a threat or anything, I can do it." She had swiped up her guitar and turned to leave.

Cursing, he jumped from his chair to catch hold of her shirt, dropping his bow in the process. Surprised, she looked at him, giving him the first view of the tears leaving tracks of mascara residue on her cheeks.

He let go of her quickly. "You wanted to play my cello, didn't you?"

She bit her lip and nodded.

So he picked up his bow and once more shoved it in her direction. Once she had it in her hesitant fingers, he stepped to the side and gestured to his chair, his stomach in all sorts of complex yoga twists.

"Th-thank you." Still with the tiny voice.

"Can I play with your guitar?"

"It's not mine. Miss Mai's loaning it to me because she said Rebecca's is too short."

"As it is," he said, picking up the simple maple electric acoustic she had left on the ground before plopping down with his legs crossed. He plucked a few chords, but didn't pick out anything exact. Mostly he just tried to focus down his world to the warbling of the strings and push out the confusing mix of nausea, nerves, and guilt cramping up his leg and now his gut too. Somewhere along the edge was alarm. Tea's meltdown had triggered something in him, and now all the emotions he had so carefully avoided the night before were creeping up on him.

Because, although no one had said it, Atem knew this situation was all his fault. Him, the band leader, the one they trusted...who Rebecca had trusted.

Tea didn't try to keep talking to him, and he was glad for that. He didn't know what he would've done if she had. Instead, he plucked out nonsense on the guitar, and she gave some experimental drags across the cello's strings. Footsteps of techies and other crews worked about them, their voices like the hum of bees on a late Spring afternoon: background noise.

After a while, the cello's light, tentative hums began to grow. Some of Tea's confidence seemed to return as she finally let the horsehair bow bite deep into the string, filling the air about them with the dark chocolate 'ahhhhh' of a low, deep G natural.

At the end of the bow's length, he heard her let out a shaky sigh, one pinched with relief.

His heart jerked.

And then she moved into a slow, belly rumbling lullaby that made his throat warble. Without meaning to, he released his own puff of tension, eyes closing and fingers falling still. The song didn't sound familiar, but it was simple. It was the kind folk songs were written for.

But, unlike him, she didn't start singing or humming along with the strings. She just pulled and pushed, as though moving with the coming and going of the ocean tide.

When she finally stopped, he roused himself like one does from a deep sleep. The tension in his calf had left, and somehow the guilt in his stomach didn't seem so acidic. He thought maybe he could actually swallow some food now, as he'd never been able to get anything down the day of a concert.

With all the care of setting down a pane of glass, Tea lay his cello back onto its side and handed him his bow, already loosened for storage.

"Thank you." Her tone had even lost that pinched, tiny quality and had returned to normal.

As he reached for his bow, the sudden urge to run his hand up her arm and to her cheek struck him. He paused for just a moment, fingers hovering over her own, before taking his bow with a hard mental shake.

"Take it as an apology for how, uh, rough I was on you this morning." For some reason his mouth didn't want to work right and it took more concentration than it should have to even get those words out.

"It's cool. I actually really appreciated your help. You really were the only one treating me like I was human."[J1]

After she left, he sat there on the floor holding the guitar for longer than he cared to admit.

[J1]I want her to seem confident and aloof to everyone else, but every so often show how unsure and delicate she is to Atem.


	4. No Rest for Kaiba's Band

4

The sound of the crowd screaming rose up to meet them in a mighty swell as their platforms lifted them on stage. Warm desert lights danced in the backdrop behind them. The gold glow bleaching out his surroundings made him think of the savannah, rife with cheetahs and a time when people ran alongside them, bare foot and wild.

And though he told himself he wouldn't look back, as the lead guitar solo broke in he almost cracked his neck to catch view of Tea, who glittered surreal and bright in Rebecca's adjusted dress. She had made an odd last minute alteration, though, begging the seamstress to add some sort of sleeves and keep her cleavage covered. The seamstress, who had never been that hard of a stickler, unlike their boss, took it as a fun challenge for her creativity. Thus, Tea wore gossamer, satin sleeves that hugged about the curves of her upper arm and a collar like Egyptian necklace to cover any sign of cleavage.

Joey and Atem had enough self-preservation to not say anything about this. Boys had no place in saying what a girl should want in a dress. Bakura, on the other hand, had no sense.

"What nunnery did you crawl out of? What, you think someone's going to jump on stage and dive down your tits?"

Tea's face had flamed at this, but she faced him with a calm demur.

"It's my body. I get to decide how much of it I show."

And for some reason, watching her rise with the rest of them to the dance of lights and roar of the crowd, Atem couldn't help but notice how much she seemed to glow because of it. The satin sleeves and beads added an air of exotic fantasy that made him swerve back to the microphone with a burst of elated energy. The first note, the first release of any performance he began had always felt to him like the first thrust of sex-surprising and euphoric. Bakura's answering cackle over the microphone echoed those same feelings.

" _Let it in!"_

A thousand voices roared the words back to him.

A thrilling dance of noise latter ended the first song, and he was left at the stand sweating and breathless, adrenaline spiking his heartbeats and spinning his vision. His last grab for the microphone almost ended with him dropping it, as his hands had gone slippery with sweat.

"Thank you, New York!"

At their answering cry, he beamed. Now came the tricky part-the one Mai had almost been ready to leave to the tabloids and entertainment columns to figure out. At least in this Atem's sense had won out. After all, it really just made things worse if you kicked them under the rug.

"I'm sure some have you have noticed a new addition to the party," he twisted around and gestured towards a blank faced Tea, who seemed to be fighting the urge to hug the guitar in front of her like a shield. Even from this distance he could make out the brilliant blue of her eyes. "Let me introduce you to Tea Gardner, probably the most remarkable and talented musician I've ever met. When we found out Rebecca wouldn't be able to make it, she pretty much magically appeared on our front doorstep and learned all our songs over night, so everyone make sure to give her a warm thanks. She's never done this before, after all."

A warm, encouraging murmur rose from the crowd, flecked with a few whoops and cat calls. Tea gave a cute little smile and waved.

"Now, since we're here to serve you," he twisted back around, hand on a hip to give his famous, knee melting, full-body smirk. He could almost hear Joey and Bakura's eyes rolling like run away marbles in their skulls. "What next?"

Even though their song order was already decided, it was always good showmanship to give the crowd the option. Besides, there was going to be someone screaming the title of the next song anyways.

Sure enough, "Double-Dip" was one of the numbers. As Atem beamed and murmured the title, close and intimately, he swore a row of girls near the front stood up and tore of their shirts-and their lack of bras underneath. He looked away quickly (he didn't need an hard-on poking out on stage), but grinned nonetheless. One hit wonder indeed. Man, if only he could rub Kaiba snob face into those perfectly shaped breasts.

For "Double-Dip," Atem backed up to a platform where a slender, red electric cello waited for him and Joey rolled back so techies could help replace his traditional drum set with a set of monstrous drums, offset by part of a marimba. Bakura just pushed some buttons, sneering at all the mess and work it took for the rest of them to get ready. _All those precious calories_ he'd say.

Tea just looked on, probably doing her best to not look awkward and stiff holding her guitar. She managed to adjust her microphone to more her liking and rolled her shoulders.

Before he even set the bow on the strings, Atem ran the words through his mind like sand between his fingers, recalling the uprush of emotions that had moved him to write these words. Then, when the ocean hushing of the onlookers calmed, he set down the horse hairs and breathed. The first rumbling C went across his belly like that night he nearly crashed into the desk to reach for a pen.

 _"Gentle now,"_ he breathed into the little mic taped to the side of his face. The crowd _hmmmmmed. "Though every morning must break colorless me across the streets, I'll still hold on tight to all the pieces, as though they had always hummed my beats. And if you meant to take away, one hit won't be enough. Double-tap, double-tap, double-tap so they don't get up."_

Joey's gentle rumble rolled into a thunderous boom as he laid loose the mallets upon his drums big enough to hide a man. Bakura's fingers all but mashed down on the keys, and, just in front of him, Atem caught sight of Tea clenching her eyes tight as her fingers jumped through three chords, strumming madly. She hit every off-beat of Joey's booms, her short, A-line hair bouncing with her shoulders.

She didn't miss once.

When the curtain finally fell, Atem's throat was comfortably sore and the shirt beneath his leather vest stuck to him like a second skin with sweat. Joey whooped and flopped his bare, glistening arms across a set of bongs. Tea all but collapsed to the floor, hanging her head back in relief. Bakura, however, cooly folded out of his tower of keys and sauntered down to the ground floor, where Atem was considering doing much the same as Tea.

"Now for revels," he said, sticking a long thumb nail between his teeth with his pinky stuck in the air like some sort of pipe.

"Lord, please," echoed up Joey's voice.

The cheering of the crowd muffled the sounds of footsteps as techies and stagehands pattered across stage to lay hold of their instruments. They were being paid by the hour, after all.

"Didn't Miss Mai say you have some album signings to do afterwards?" asked Tea.

" _We_ have signings," said Atem, wishing she hadn't said anything. "You're part of this team now too."

"Wait, like-"

"I thought she was just a temp till Rebecca cooled down?" said Joey, perking up in his seat. "No offense to you, Tea."

"No offense taken."

Bakura rolled his eyes and rolled his hip to the side. Despite the sweat and fervor of the performance, his complexion was as pale as ever. "I vote she stays put like concrete. Anyone is better than the Bitch Witch."

"She wasn't that bad," said Atem, though he said it half-heartedly.

"You're just saying that out of guilt."

"Sure. Go ahead and say that."

"I will."

Joey sighed and rolled onto his feet to join them. "Come on, Pharaoh, you can't be too hard on yourself. She's the one who flipped out. We alls know you're drunk."

Atem, who had followed Tea to the ground, flopped onto his back. "Can we not talk about this?"

"Because Tea's here? She's going to know eventually."

Tea threw up a tired arm. "But I know it's not my business, so please, feel free to not tell me. Though I've rarely heard of anyone being proud of what they've done while drunk, if that helps any."

"I can hardly hear you," gruffed Atem. "Get over here."

"How about all you lazy swine get up and tell me where the hell your guitarist is."

The Ice Age came whooshing onstage with the cracking command of that voice. Like puppets yanked by their strings, all three of them straightened and turned towards the source, which was walking-or more like stalking-across the stage, a magnificent canvas and leather trench coat billowing behind him. Despite being not too many years older than them, Seto Kaiba's youth, instead of dulling his intimidation factor, just made it seem all the more likely that he would impale you with his fist, having the strength and vitality to do so. You didn't have to work for him to hear the rumors of his meticulous ruthlessness when it came to employees who failed him, or worse, anyone who dared to double cross him. Bakura and Joey had pointed out on more than one occasion to Kaiba being more like the terrifying godfather of a mob rather than just the CEO of a music and technology corporation.

Although Tea lacked the knowledge of Kaiba's reputation, she stood up quickly enough to not look rude, and Kaiba passed right by her without even a glance in her direction. His eyes were all for the unlikely trio meeting his eye through the sheer strength of their own pride.

"Nevermind the fact that you lot are spending my hard earned time and money to follow your cute little dreams, you thought it smart to not even inform me that you were lacking a crucial player to your performance and, even worse, got someone off the streets to do the job."

Atem finally averted his eyes from the towering figure before him. "Kaiba, sir, we didn't go looking on the streets-"

"But from the streets she came from nonetheless, am I wrong?"

"If you'd listen to her, you'd see where she comes from doesn't matter," started Joey, who had come from a less than proper neighborhood and took offense.

"Oh, I listened to her all right. And watched. It's obvious she hasn't been on a proper stage let alone seen one in her entire life. I hope you're prepared for the laughing stock the reviews will make of you. But that isn't what matters, is it? Because I will be the one having to deal with them."

"Technically that would be our public relations manager," muttered Bakura in his snide, side-note sort of way. Loyal server of the obnoxious, to the end.

Kaiba's ice grey eyes swiveled on Bakura with all the piercing ferocity of a tiger, even though the rest of his face stayed completely neutral. Bakura didn't meet those eyes, but Atem saw his feet shift. For a brief second, Atem feared Kaiba might actually hit the pale pianist, but instead he gave a dismissive snort and whirled back around, where Tea stood rooted to the spot some yards away, making no attempt to hide the fact that she really was using the guitar as a shield now.

With march-like steps fit for an Imperial Overlord facing down a failure of an underling, Seto Kaiba closed the distance between them. He didn't speak till they were nearly toe to toe.

"Tea Gardner. You didn't graduate high school, but tested out early with a G.E.D so you could work full time. Your mother has been married multiple times and has had various children with spouses and boyfriends. They currently live at a Sunny Side park in a trailer that would probably house a pack of wild animals better than people, and yet I'm told you have a musical talent only heard of in urban legends." Kaiba folded his arms across his chest. "Well?"

Tea, whose knuckles had gone white on the neck of her guitar, gulped. "Well what...sir?"

"Why are you here?"

"Um, w-well, I had to move out-"

"That's obvious. But why move out here? To New York? You could have found cheaper living in other States, even auditioned to the top universities with your talent and gotten plenty of financial assistance. I find it highly unlikely that if your talent has any worth that you would just happen to stumble upon my idiotic band just in their time of need." His eyes narrowed. "And don't bother trying to bull shit me."

As he spoke, Tea's hands loosened from the neck of the guitar, allowing it to hang before her on the strap. From Atem's angle, he could see her move her hands back to her sides and ball them up, as she had done in facing him since the first moment. A familiar steeliness came to the way she set her shoulders and raised her chin.

"As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Kaiba, I have done your band a favor by staying up all night to learn their songs so that your enterprise doesn't go down the drain. Not that it's any of your business, but since you've been rude enough to dig up my whole life, I never wanted to go into the music industry because I don't want to be a poor music teacher and I don't like the culture of the entertainment world, let alone trust it enough to raise children in it."

When Kaiba's eyebrows shot up, an urge to laugh punched Atem so hard, he had to throw his hands over his mouth to stop it from coming out. Bakura smirked toothily, and Joey snickered.

"My plans were actually to go to a technical school," she continued. "Get a trade that would pay decent wages, but since my step father makes so much I can't qualify for financial aid, so I thought I'd come to New York and use my music to make some money. I had just found a job to get me on my way when I heard your band practically yelling how much they needed a guitarist."

Kaiba was dead faced. "So, you're telling me you're opting out of music entirely...because your end goal is to have children?"

"Yes."

"And you think your kids will become drug addicted whores if they grow up with a mom in the music industry?"

"Well, I didn't say tha-"

"You implied it."

"..."

"So this is just a means to an end for you. You'll play in this band long enough to get the money you need and then you're back to become Bobbette the Builder with surplus to breed a trailer trash horde of your own."

The steel in her eyes died, although she didn't look away from Kaiba's gaze. Atem watched as her hands uncoiled and her proud shoulders slumped.

But Kaiba seemed satisfied. "This makes my job easier, then. I will send you a contract that will be binding for the next year. A year should be long enough and more for me to find a replacement and for you to earn the money you need. Let it be known that I am not above charity. Be grateful that I haven't kicked you off the market with the rest of this wannabe band."

And without so much as a good-bye, Seto stalked past her and off stage, where a pair of stiff, wide-eyed techies had watched the drama unfold with a mixture of awe and pity.

But Tea Gardner didn't move. She stood there like a statue, staring up where Seto's face had once been, the band of her guitar slowly digging into the side of her neck. The eyeshadow and bronzer on her face still glittered in the stage-lights.

"That bastard..." managed Joey.

"Get ready for the waterworks," added Bakura, who didn't look in any inclination to start pulling out hanky's.

Atem, however, feared if he opened his mouth to speak it would turn into a slandering roar that Kaiba would definitely hear, and since they really were lucky that their world tour was still on, even though Kaiba had flown from God knows where to wreck fear on them himself, Atem couldn't risk jeopardizing his band again.

But no one could miss the broken look in her eyes.

Tea, probably hearing them, blinked a few times, then dropped her chin in their direction with a plastic sort of smile.

"I'm okay, guys. We should probably be getting ready for those signings, huh?"

And with a flick of her hair as though she could care less, which convinced no one, she headed off stage in the opposite direction.

 **Just a quick note here to say thank you to those who have review. ^.^ Next update will be on Monday, as usual.**


	5. Religion and Bigots

**Thank you for all your reviews. To any of you who are new to my stories, as you've probably noticed so far, I'm not that big into author's notes. I think they interrupt too much from the story. I am, however, very open to PMs and reviews and do my best to respond to any questions. I love feedback, good or bad, or just your opinion. They're always such a delight to read.**

 **Now, I'll stop detracting from the story. XD**

5

The organized chaos that was usually signings passed them in a sweaty blur. Spring had already come, and summer threatened to be searing on the edge of the breeze. At least the band had the stadium's entrance hall for shelter, but Atem wondered about the people who waited in line. Even inside the building the A/C wasn't much in the face of the combined force of two open doors and a mass of warm bodies.

So it was only about time when a young woman near the door collapsed. What Atem couldn't believe was how the people around her didn't do anything about it, just stared as though unsure of what they were seeing.

"Hold it," he started to get up, eyes flying to meet those of the onsite medical personnel-to see the last of Tea's long legged leap over the table. Seeing as she was just a fill in, she had a clear space to land, free of autograph-hungry groupies, and was over at the girl's side before the medical personnel had even realized someone was there.

"What's wrong with you people?" She shooed the others back, breaking up the line. She then leaned over the girl, blocking Atem's view. Her arms dipped down and helped a rather bemused and tearful looking girl to a sitting position by the time a paramedic had reached her.

"Oy," Joey elbowed him, alerting him to the eager and confused fan still waiting with their outstretched album.

The fallen girl was escorted to a quieter corner of the entrance hall and Tea returned. After that, the signings finished up, although Atem couldn't help but notice that Tea got a significant increase of requests for autographs after that.

Service to the public complete, they were more or less herded into a limo and zipped away to the hotel to get changed into something more...party appropriate. Mai had managed to reserve a local high-end night club for that evening, and local stars would be attending, along with an assortment of choice guests, mostly fans.

Joey, who sweated easily, didn't wait. He stripped his shirt off right then and there, startling Tea, who had found a cozy corner of the limo to curl up.

"The sight of so much moola frighten you?" he bounced each peck back and forth, leering at her.

Yami, who got a lap full of Joey's offending garment, chucked it back into his face. "Save your stripping for someone who cares."

"Oh, but she does care, don't you?"

"I'm not sure where you got that idea," she said, and her sudden ice surprised Yami. Most girls would at least blush or laugh, or at least be flattered. Yami was straight as a post, but he heard what the general female population thought of Joey.

"No need to be like that," said Joey, who at least stopped puffing out his chest. "I meant it as a compliment, no offense intended. On stage you did, frick, I don't even have the words for it. And you did it all while looking gorgeous! There ain't no one like you."

Atem inwardly rolled his eyes. Every cute girl was promoted to 'gorgeous' in Joey's book, at least while he was talking to them.

She blinked and the coolness faded from her face, but not entirely from her voice. "Oh. Thanks, I just don't take well to guys, uh...doing whatever you just did."

Bakura suddenly burst out in his famous dry cackle, which never failed to irritate Atem. It always reminded him of his doubts as to why they were friends.

"Probably can tell off the bat that you tell that to every pretty girl you meet," he said, flashing his too-white teeth at Joey wickedly.

Joey's brow dropped into a glower. "That ain't true, jerkwad. You're just jealous."

"Good heavens, of what?"

"That I can draw in the ladies like bees to a field of virgin clover."

Bakura snorted. "The kind of woman attracted to a man who toots his own horn while popping his boobs can't be of very high quality."

"What? How would you know?"

"I watch TV. You're a cliché trope, mutt."

"What did you just call me?!"

Atem slapped a hand to his brow. "Ugh, guys, really?" Tea was still watching, and he could see her opinion of them dropping by the second, and why shouldn't it?

Bakura leaned back, still smirking, but at least acting like he cared about Atem's emotional and mental well-being, which helped cancel out the 'evil cackle' effects. Joey didn't settle down until he caught sight of the unimpressed look in Tea's eyes and settled back into the seat, grinding his teeth.

Hoping to distract the two from another collision, he hung his hands in his lap and gave Tea a smile. "Are you excited? Do you like to dance?"

Joey perked up, fury instantly forgotten. "I can teach you, if you want. Real easy."

"Or are you a fan of anyone?" Atem continued. "Maybe they'll be there, we could introduce you."

Tea put up her hands, an uncomfortable curve to her lips. "Thanks, guys, but I think I'll pass."

All of them stared. Even Bakura got a funny look.

"Are you sick?" asked Atem.

"Oh, no, I feel fine."

"You afraid you won't belong?" asked Joey. "Because that won't be an issue, trust me."

"No! That's not it at all! Really, I just...would rather not."

"Is it what Kaiba said?" asked Atem gently.

She did seem to pause at that, and he thought he saw something pass behind her eyes, but she shook her head. "Nah. I just, um...won't there be a lot of drinking there?"

"Pfft, yes!" said Joey, a bit more happily than Atem thought was polite.

"Yeah, see, I don't drink, so I don't think I'd have that much fun."

Bakura rolled his chin to the side, looking to the ceiling as though he thought her especially stupid. "Then don't drink. Problem solved."

"We won't let anything happen to you," said Atem, who was also starting to smile. Her naivtivity was cute-wait, hadn't he already decided she was a druggie? Then again, he found himself caring less and less as he thought about leading her around like an uncertain child to the lights and music and celebrities walking around with stars about their necks and fingers. There would be entertainment she'd probably always been too poor to even imagine, and if alcohol was what she was so afraid of, they could always find some tasty little something to banish her nerves.

Whatever chill was left from Joey melted then, and her expression softened. Atem's stomach leapt on realizing the soft gaze was directed at him.

"Thank you," she said. "That's really sweet. But it's not like that. See, um...it's sort of against my religion to drink, so I'd rather not be around the temptation."

As Atem and Joey processed this, Bakura burst into a full on laugh.

"Oh dear god, you're joking?"

Her softness fell to be replaced by a blank, impassible wall.

Atem, finding himself caring about her opinion more than he usually would, scrambled to attend to whatever damage Bakura had just inflicted. "What religion are you?"

"I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."

"That's a mouthful," said Joey, still looking a bit stunned.

The corner of her mouth twitched. "You probably know us as 'Mormons.'"

Atem had little idea of what a Mormon was other than that there had been some presidential candidate not too long ago who had been one, and maybe some musical about their extra Bible, but his concern was on Bakura, who's lengthening smile had widened enough to show his sharpened canines.

"I've heard of those," he said, cool, suave, arms stretching out on the back of the seat. "Part o' some polygamists group. Build temples every which where you do secret ceremonies and believe anyone who puts their dick in the wrong place goes to hell, right?"

A bit of color rose to her face. "I am not a polygamist."

"Don't want to come to a party with a bunch of sinners, now, do you?" sneered Bakura, though he looked as though he were having the time of his life. "Afraid you might actually enjoy yourself and God will disown you?"

Atem kicked at Bakura's shin. "Shut it."

But the color had already darkened across her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes brightened.

Bakura put his hands to his cheeks while leaving his elbows on the seat. "Oh no, is the saint going to cry?"

"Seriously, man, shut up!" cried Joey, leaning forward threateningly.

"I can defend myself," said Tea sharply, startling all of them. She closed her eyes for a just a moment, but when she opened them the bright blue seemed to almost glow with some inner fire. Atem found himself holding his breath, bracing himself for the explosion.

But when she spoke, it was just within hearing, but clear and steady.

"You're the one who is afraid, Bakura. Think you might see me enjoying myself and start feeling guilty? Fine, yes, I don't want to go to the party because I don't think God would want me too, because a place full of drugs and sex and abandon can't be the best place for a daughter of God, and I care because all He wants for me is to be happy, not to mention He's the only reason I'm even here."

The door suddenly opened besides her. She stuck out a foot into the night-lit pavement, turning her head to peer outside, that fire somehow brighter then the city night lights blazing down.

"And for the record," she said with a backward glance, lightly veiled by the long, styled locks that framed her face. "I don't care what you lot do with your lives. If you're looking for judgment, look elsewhere, because it's a waste of time and none of my business."

With that she slid out and made her way towards the doors of the hotel lobby.

Bakura didn't look so amused anymore. His black eyes had only gotten darker.

Joey made sure to give Bakura his nastiest look before following and calling after her.

Atem didn't glower at him, nor did he rush, though he did give him a sidelong raised eyebrow with his hand out to steady himself from tripping out of the limo.

"Guess you were right about her not being a druggie," he said.

"That didn't prove anything," Bakura almost growled. "Religion's a breeding ground for hypocrites and bigots."

"Really? I wonder what religion you are, then."

And before Bakura could say anything to that, Atem stepped out and into the amber glow of the hotel lobby.


	6. Alcohol is So Much Fun

6

A beautiful dame he'd never met, but who had a gorgeous array of cinnamon speckles on her arms, laughed at something he had said. Lights and sounds danced about him like another world, another dimension, and her laughter created one of many moments in which Atem felt the main character of a wondrous adventure. Here, in the safety of the building, Seto Kaiba became a mere murmur and the door slamming behind Rebecca was only a bad dream.

Another shot of something sweet and savory burned down his throat. Lights. Rainbows.

"Like constellations?" she was saying, long auburn hair brushing across the inside of his elbow.

"No, like stars," he said. " Cinnamon stars. Chocolate stars. And curves. I like curves."

"Wow, how deep of you. A guy who likes curves."

"Girls aren't all curves," he tried to say, but it came out more like, "Gits don't 'll curves." Then he let out a wheezy little curse. "I sound Joey...like. Ish."

"You're not sounding too good. Shall I call a taxi for you?"

Taxis? He didn't like taxis. They smelled weird and were too expensive. Where he came from the land was too open and vast for poultry...pelfry...petty taxi conventions. That's why they had cars!

She was laughing at him again. It took him a moment to realize that the words he had been hearing weren't thoughts in his head, but words from his mouth. That got him laughing too. Chicken cars!

Her phone came out. He watched her dial the number, suddenly unquestionably fascinated by her turquoise manicure. Tea hadn't a manicure. He remembered her fingers on the cello. The nails had been short, peeling, and clean.

"Who's Tea?"

The freckled beauty had the beginning of the Queen on her hand in freckles. Stars. Cinnamon stars.

"Oh! Wait! She's that replacement of yours! Did she really learn all those songs over night just by listening to them?"

An image of Tea popped up in his mind, her head leaned back over the sofa in their hotel suite, eyes closed, black ear buds in her ears. She hadn't so much as twitched a muscle, not even to tap her knee or move her lips to the lyrics. She had held absolutely still, like a painting. Music had taken her whole.

Without warning, the sense of uproarious good fun buzzing through his body was struck through by a hot pang. Groaning, he dropped his head to the table, which felt nice and cool. He didn't want to be here anymore. The music pounding in his ears was offbeat to his heart, and the same lyrics had been repeated over and over for the last eternity. He could smell the polish of the table. How many people had this table known?

"You're starting to ramble, are you okay?"

Joey. When had he gotten over here? Wait, had he been there the whole time? No, it had been just Atem and the freckled dame. He remembered that. He had brought her over specifically, caught by the Queen on her hand.

And there she was, sitting him up, brow furrowed. He thought he could make out Pieces across her nose, but there was so much make up he couldn't tell.

"Don't worry, I got him," said Joey again, and Atem came off the stool, Joey's hard arm around him. Offended, Atem pushed him aside. He was fully capable of walking, thank you, and he would have done just that if the stupid floor hadn't decided to tilt randomly. Someone had to tell these people that it wasn't amusing to make your establishment capable of doing that.

There was a black car. No, the inside of the car was black. It was nice just watching the lights go by. At least Joey was here to tell the driver when to stop. Atem might have let him go driving and driving until he inevitably fell asleep. Maybe when he'd open his eyes he'd be back home amongst the sagebrush, where the land went on forever.

He imagined Tea standing on one of those cliffs, as still as she had been with music, her head tilted back, her fanned lashes down and bright with the collective light of the blue sky.

The hotel carpet was too white. But it looked awfully squashy and nice. Thick.

"Oh no you don't, not now. Come on, Pharaoh, all the way."

"Is he okay?"

Atem perked up. He knew that voice. Would Tea listen to music for him? Maybe up towards the sun?

"What's he talking about?"

"Oh, don't listen to him-not unless you have a recorder. Seeing his face first thing in the morning as he listens to himself is priceless."

He didn't feel so good.

"He doesn't look so good."

Next thing he knew he was on his hands and knees, throwing up onto that white carpet. As he coughed on the last remains of it, some awareness returned to him, bitter, sour, and wholly unwelcome.

Joey gagged. "I am so not cleaning that up. Seriously, man, don't you know your limit?"

"Shut up." He pushed himself to his knees and wiped out his mouth, and that's when he remembered that Tea was there. The urge to drop his face into his own vomit and drown percolated from somewhere in his suicidal lobe. Ugh, why wasn't she asleep? She should be asleep-why didn't he know his limit?

"I can-" his words were cut off by a pair of cool, very not-Joey arms on his shoulders. She lifted him up with surprising strength and wriggled herself under his arm.

"Call housekeeping, will you?" she told a green-faced Joey. Did she know Joey had a sympathetic stomach?

"Sure. Yeah."

The floor still teetered, but this time he didn't mind all that much. He could feel her shoulders beneath her tee-shirt, small and willowy. They'd be freckled. He'd never seen them. She'd kept them covered. What constellations would be there?

"Can I see your shoulders?" he asked.

"Maybe if we go swimming," she said, sounding a bit strained. "Focus more on walking, please?"

Luckily, the door to his room was ajar, so she was able to kick it open. In the darkness he became disoriented, forgetting which way was up and which was down. He couldn't see what was ahead of him, and the only reason he knew he was moving was because of Tea's muscles beneath his arm, around his waist, against his side. He remembered something like this. Desire rose within him.

He didn't know which way was up, but he knew which way was her. He turned his head towards her, nuzzled his way to her ear, and nibbled it.

She shoved him. Hard.

For a horrifying breath he was falling through nothing, not knowing where he was. The next he had landed safe and sound, wanting after that body of softness that had moved him here. His brain had groggily reported a scent of sweetened vanilla.

As she roughly picked up his legs and moved them onto the bed, he reached out for her and tried to tug on her arm, but it escaped him as though she had a layer of Crisco slathered over it.

"Please stop touching me and go to sleep, Atem."

He pulled back at that. He didn't want to make her uncomfortable. Wait, had he? Had he hurt her? Had he touched too hard? There wasn't anything nice or pleasant in that.

"You didn't hurt me."

What was that tugging on his legs? She was taking off his shoes?

A blanket was thrown over him. Ah, there was the softness he needed.

"Good night, Pharaoh."


	7. Dating and the Cult

7

Of course Bakura would be the bastard who woke him up by throwing open his curtains.

He hissed as the light pierced into his very soul, but mainly through his brain, which felt as though it had swollen to twice its size and was straining to burst through his skull.

"I hate you."

"I know," said Bakura, all smugness. "Plane's leaving in two hours. We got forty-five to get ready."

Atem moaned and groaned some more, and by the time he'd bullied himself into a sitting position, Bakura had left. Hand over his eyes, squinting, he turned to glance at the clock.

Sitting next to it was a still steaming cup of coffee and a little plastic cup. Inside the cup were two Advils and two pink Pepto-Bismol tablets.

"What the..." This was creepy. Bakura never did anything this nice, not even if he was trying to poison you, probably because he figured you would catch on to him if he tried to be nice. Maybe Mai-nah. Mai wasn't cruel, but she always had this way of thinking that men should be men and cowboy up. Not exactly the nurse maid type. Joey?

His musings would have to wait, though, as his throbbing head didn't take all too kindly to being used. Thinking was a luxury he couldn't afford.

He swallowed the pills, along with the coffee, and took a hot shower. By the time he was out, dressed, groomed, and caffeinated, he felt almost normal. More normal than he usually did after a night like that, at least.

"I could do more mornings like this," he thought, throwing open his door. "Oy! Joey!"

A huffed response that sounded like 'Fua fu fua!' came from the general direction of their apartment's living area. Atem smiled. At least it sounded like he hadn't missed breakfast.

Sure enough, he found messy haired blond stuffing in a last minute breakfast from a Styrofoam take out box on the couch. A bit of ketchup had splattered on his white T-shirt. Mai wouldn't like that.

"Thanks for the coffee and stuff," said Atem. He spied another takeout box on the coffee table and took hold of it as he fell on the couch next to the drummer.

"What coffee?" asked Joey through a mouthful of eggs.

"Finish chewing. If you didn't do it, who did?"

Joey swallowed hard and pounded his chest to ease up his probably stretched esophagus. "Not Bakura, though if you get the runs on the plane, you know why. He might have been playing on your headache to cloud your judgment."

"Oh God, I hadn't thought of that."

A loud, dry snort came from the hallway, where their resident albino had just appeared. "Even I'm not base enough to prank a man while he's down. If I cause you any stomach disturbances, don't worry, you'll know, because I'll be laughing my ass off."

And since the guy wasn't even smirking, they'd have to take that for truth.

"If you want to know, ask the Saint." Bakura jerked a thumb towards the front door. "Apparently Mormons don't drink coffee. She caught me right as I was getting up to ask how to use a coffee machine."

"Girl don't know how to work a coffee machine?" asked Joey, incredulous. "And coffee? What's so bad about coffee?"

A muscle above Bakura's eye twitched. "She said 'God said so. That's why.'"

Atem managed a short bark of mirth before he took his first bite of the breakfast burrito. Man, when had been the last time he had eaten anything? Did he usually eat this good in the mornings? Nonetheless, he did feel more than a little flutter in his stomach at her thoughtfulness, especially since he vaguely remembered puking at her feet. Oh, crud, why'd he have to remember that? He could hardly remember anything else, so why that?

Another eye twitch from Bakura. "Care to explain the joke?"

Joey swallowed the last of his own burrito and smirked. "Nothing. It's just funny how much she gets to you. It's almost like she knows it. Heck, I might just start flinging scriptures at you.'"

Atem swallowed and flung a dramatic hand towards Bakura, finger pads splayed out as though to shot lasers at him, and voice dropped an octive. "Get thou behind me, Satan."

Bakura's twitching turned into a full blown, malicious smirk. "Oh, I can play Satan, alright. Do you really want me behind you?"

Atem quickly dropped his hand and went back to eating his burrito. Joey gulped and looked away.

"I thought so."

Manager Mai came in not too long after with Tea in tow, looking particularly frazzled. Cross seas travel couldn't do this to her alone, and Tea had a meek, guilty slant to her shoulders.

"You lot better have your shit together or-Joseph Wheeler, what is that on your shirt?"

"Uh..."

"People are going to be taking _pictures_!" She threw her arms in the air. "Damn it, see if I care when they write you down as a slob." With a wave of hip length, perfectly curled blond hair, she marched down the hallway and started kicking down doors, presumably to make sure they hadn't left anything behind.

"So mothering," said Bakura, twisting the thick chain of one of his occult necklaces.

"What did you do?" Joey asked Tea.

Tea just sort of pinched her knees together. "My mom may have my birth certificate...among other things. Stuff to get a passport and whatnot. She had to call Kaiba."

"'Nuff said." Joey pulled out his shirt to squint down at the ketchup stain. "Aw, come on, she freaked out at me over that? Tea, be a doll and toss me a wet rag, will ya?"

Since she was closest to the kitchenette, Tea only had to take a few steps to reach the sink. It was enough to draw Atem's attention to the new way her rear popped out and how strangely longer her legs were.

"Nice shoes," Joey said, seeing as Atem was finding it a bit difficult to talk all a sudden. He was starting to remember more besides the puke, like her cool shoulders under his arm and the strong scent of sweet vanilla.

Sure enough, the cause for the new oomph to the butt was a new pair of pink strappy heels. She wore capries, though, not the booty shorts Atem had usually seen girls wear with those kind of shoes-or, rather, what he wanted her to wear. Damn, that girl had a set of _legs._ Lightly freckled too, but just enough to do it for him.

Atem shook himself to catch what she was saying, just to spy a particularly nasty sneer directed at him from Bakura. Crap, he was in for it.

"Mai took me shopping this morning, isn't that nice? She said it was her job to keep me presentable, or something like that." She hesitated. "Almost threw away my favorite shirt, though..."

"Consider yourself lucky," Atem managed, determined to not give Bakura more reason to leer at him like that. "She burned my Star Trek shirt."

"Only because you kept digging it out of the trash," said Bakura.

"It was limited edition! Second generation! Besides, it was comfy..." he was getting a little sad just thinking about it.

"Better hide it soon," said Joey to her darkly. "Or she'll get it when your back is turned."

Tea gave them a blank stare, then abruptly burst into laughter. The sound twirled something within Atem, a not at all unpleasant feeling. He couldn't help smiling as well. He stopped quickly on seeing the return of Bakura's leer though. He would have shoved the evil albino onto his face if Bakura hadn't had the foresight to sit on the opposite side of the living room.

"I like you guys," she said, tossing Joey the wet rag.

He caught it with an equally gracious grin. "Well, it's good to hear you don't hate us."

"Nah. You're such boys." Her eyes flashed to the toe-head in the room. "Well, two boys and a whatever you'd call yourself, Bakura."

Distracted from his egging of Atem, Bakura crossed his legs and turned his head to give her a sidelong glance, maybe to optimize the strength of his black eyes by letting the light glint off them. Joey and Atem had wondered on multiple occasions if the guy practiced in the mirror when they weren't looking.

"What would you call me?" he asked, all polite warmth.

Tea considered him for a moment, leaning against the side of the kitchenette counters as she did so. Then she shrugged.

"Do you want some initial impression or something more thought out?"

"Oh, you're giving me an option?" he spoke it like he was in a parody for a tea party. "Why not both then."

"Alright. Shallow first, something else later." She shifted to her other hip. "I think you're a cat."

A stunned paused followed that. Joey started snickering first, which got Atem started.

Bakura wasn't amused. Just baffled. "A cat?"

"Yeah. Cool, aloof, quick to flash your claws and teeth, lord of all you see, even if no one else sees it that way. I can just see you perched on some carpet cat tower daring all those beneath you to even try calling you 'kitty cat'. Heaven forbid they try to pet you."

Her last words were hardly heard over the combined force of Atem and Joey's laughter.

"Two boys and a cat," Tea squeezed in, grinning.

It was a good thing Mai returned from her sacking of their bedrooms then, because Bakura looked ready to start throwing tea coasters across the room.

Despite the extra stress Mai had to endure in getting all of Tea's papers in order, they were still able to make their ten o' clock flight. More than a few people were staring as the foursome sat down in their seats. No private Kaiba jet for them. It was economy class jetliner, dinky stiff pillows, babies crying, bad movie reruns and all.

While it wasn't Atem or Bakura's first international flight, and Joey had a strange habit of falling asleep the moment he sat down, Tea had never been on a plane, which provided endless entertainment for Atem. She had stepped through the metal detector with her fingers outspread like a tutu, as though expecting a tingle as it scanned her, jumped up the elevators, stuck herself to the huge windows as planes flew in, and fiddled with every bit of her seat as to find all its secret buttons of world domination.

"Will someone please get the toddler under control," grumbled Bakura none too quietly, but Tea ignored him anyways.

Atem also ignored him, as he had the window seat and got to have Tea leaning over his lap to get a better view. Even though he liked the idea of her eventually laying on it to keep her site on the view outside, he offered to trade with her, which had its own reward in her little squeal and getting to slide past her in close quarters.

"I saw that," said Bakura when Atem sat down. Joey was already snoring away between them.

"Good job, you got eyes."

"You know you're not going to get anywhere, right?"

Atem shot him a look. The last thing he wanted was for Bakura to start mocking or embarrassing him and Tea like a ten year old over a poor new couple.

Bakura's mischievous smirk wasn't there, though. Just an unorthodox look of pity. At Atem's growing confusion, he sighed, and reached across him to nudge Tea, who was probably too caught up in runway gazing to hear him.

"Hey, I'm curious. What's the Mormon view on dating?"

She narrowed her eyes and wrinkled her nose. "What, so you can make fun of me?"

"Nah, I honestly want to know." He even brought up his hands in mock kitty paws. "Meow?"

While an unpleasant sensation crawled up Atem's back, Tea wavered, even giggled a bit.

"Alright. Well, we wait till we're sixteen, but we don't date seriously till we're 18, and we take it really, really seriously, because we believe in getting married for eternity. Marriage is really important because it makes families, and a lot of stuff in the church is all about supporting the family."

Atem listened to this with growing confusion. That all sounded harmless enough, even quite nice and romantic. He'd managed to glean that Mormons were a Christian church, but he had never heard quite a warm view of marriage before. So what was Bakura getting at?

"That sounds nice," said Bakura. "But how do you take it seriously? Are there, like, certain ways of doing it or standards?"

"Oh, yeah. No sex before marriage, of course, or anything too close to it." She looked back to the window, her tone betraying a wandering mind. She probably knew instinctually that Bakura didn't actually care. "And date those who are worthy to go to the temple, or someone working to go to the temple. That's where you get sealed, you see. For time and all eternity."

"And who can go into the temple?" Bakura's eyes were on Atem now, who was hyper aware of a sharp, sinking sensation in his stomach.

"A worthy member of the Church." She seemed to catch on that something was going on, as she turned around to give him a suspicious pout. "I know you don't care about this, so why are you asking?"

"Just sounds a bit narrow minded to me," he said casually, looking away from Atem before she could see. "A Church who decides who you can and can't date? Sounds like a cult."

Her brow furrowed. "Being worthy to go to the temple is just about being an upstanding person, and the same qualities that would take you there support true love-"

"Yeah, whatever." Bakura folded his arms behind his head and yawned. "I got what I want."

An almost clammy chill had come over Atem that he couldn't fully understand. It wasn't that big of a deal. There were other gorgeous women with freckles who didn't have such weird standards. Bakura was right, she did sound like she was part of a cult.

Tea glared at Bakura, irritated. "I can date and marry whoever I please, I just trust the guidelines I'm given."

"Like not dating someone who isn't a member of your Church?" asked Bakura, eyes closed.

"I don't see how this is any of your business." She looked back to her window with a 'humph.' "You don't even like me."

But she hadn't denied it, and thus the discomfort wouldn't leave.

Atem suddenly wished he hadn't switched seats with her.


	8. Lure Me In Fast and Quick

8

Despite the pride in which Atem held his Egyptian heritage, he had only ever been to Egypt once, and that was in a fit of rebellion when he was fifteen years old.

His mother, beautiful, smart, stressed, worn out, continued to refuse tell him how to get in contact with his father, when Atem knew for a fact that she stilled talked to him at least once a year, if not once a month. He had been at that time of life when youth are desperately trying to find out who they are, and knowing where they come from is key to that. Having known no father outside his mother's father, Atem felt he needed to know, if nothing else than so he could sign off the man who hadn't stuck around to raise him.

Getting to Egypt had been surprisingly easy. A part time job, signing up for a passport, buying the ticket, etc. He had known Joey and Bakura back then too, and both had been more than willing to help him out with the more shady work, like hacking out his father's address/contact information from his mother's laptop. Back then Joey had more on his shoulders, and Bakura had a lot less. Freedom had changed all of them for better and for worse.

He never found his father, though. The number he called was disconnected soon after he used it. Despite having an address, he was never able to make heads or tails of the long, unnamed streets of Cairo, and few understood his broken Egyptian enough to give him directions. When the time he could afford ran out and he loaded on to his flight back home, all he had to show for his efforts was a sunburn and empty pockets.

And the music. He had the music. But he didn't realize it until the cello strings bit into the pads of his fingers. That music had been what made him finally join in to Joey's and Bakura's stupid plan to make a band, despite his horrible stage fright. Somehow, going back to Egypt, to the papyrus framed by sands and brown skinned people who looked so much like him, made his stage fright smaller, weaker, manageable.

On landing in London, _Millenium Sands_ were given the afternoon and evening to recuperate from the flight. Jet lag was a real thing, and the four of them ended up collapsing where they could. Since hotels were a bit more expensive in London, and because Kaiba was a penny pinching miser, Atem ended up having to share a bed with Bakura. Both of them believed themselves more worthy of the day bed over Joey, but since Joey turned into a flailing, long-limbed flailing back of flesh complete with karate kid noises, Atem and Bakura got to hug their sides of the same bed. Lucky Tea, by virtue of being the only girl, got the second bed.

When Atem woke up, he found himself wide awake in pitch darkness. A gentle green glow told him it was three in the morning. He lay there watching four more green minutes pass before he rose, a familiar up rush of _need_ moving him to his back pack, where he pulled out a nondescript notebook and his favorite brand of black ink gel pen. After shuffling about the sparsely furnished room for sandals and his guitar, he found the balcony curtains and pushed them aside. A glowing city, not too much unlike the one he had just left, burbled beneath him like a stream of orange-yellow circuits and reflected starlight.

Careful to close the curtains and the doors behind him, he took a seat on the floor of the balcony, ignoring the chairs. Their room looked to be on the top floor, which gave him a satisfying sense of disconnect from the life around him as he pulled out his notebook, clicked on his pen, and breathed.

That's how all his songs started. With that deep kind of breath that reached down to a part of him that had been rubbed raw by…something, that had come long before Atem had ever seen those desert sands, not so unlike his old home in the States.

As he let the words trickle out onto the page—they never rushed, always trickled, even when they raced through his brain—he once more wondered why he cared so much or why he felt so confused. He had dreamt of searching through Egypt again. In this particular dream, his subconscious had dug up an old memory of an open market stall that sold meat. The man had a worker with a handful of brush swatting at the few flies that made it past the fumes of whatever incense he had been smoking. Atem had to duck away, eyes watering, even if the smell of the incense hadn't been that strong. It was the smell of burning, of smoke, that never failed to prickle the hairs on his arms and smart the back of his throat.

And yet, for some reason, that memory elicited what his mind had really been on as he fell asleep.

His pen eased out.

 ** _Perhaps it's rising that I fear,_**

 ** _Or the fall I anticipate,_**

 ** _But tell me I can't make the jump_**

 ** _And I'll take it as bait._**

 ** _To lure me in, fast and quick-_**

 ** _Blue and sweet and beautiful_**

 ** _Faster, faster, up and out_**

 ** _Till snap-_**

 ** _There's nothing there for me._**

 ** _Nothing,_**

 ** _But open sky._**

He hesitated, biting his lip, even as his fingers pinched and cramped to continue writing. A first verse that rhymed and a free flowing chorus? He'd have to work that out in notes—hence why he had brought the guitar. But, because he knew whatever Genius or Muse moved through him at these times wouldn't stick around, he put the pen back down.

He hurriedly scribbled out the rest of the words that niggled in the back of his head then snapped the notebook close. Now, to let it cool—you always want to let these things sit—before one could have a second take on it, probably to work out the clash of free flow verse and rhyme. As he waited he could get a feel for the chorus tune in his head, so he brought the guitar around. He would have rather played his cello, but since the cello was a considerably louder instrument than a guitar, Atem made do with it, even though he wasn't particularly good. It didn't matter now, though.

When the whisper of the door announced another visitor, he paused in his playing until they sat down next to him, also forgoing a chair, then continued playing with rattled concentration. He could feel the familiar sensation of deflation that accompanied the muse shying away. Of course it would have to be her, all frumpy and drowsy in her new silk, pink jammies. Joey could sleep for eternity, if you let him, and Bakura was no lover of fresh air.

She held two cups in her hands, one of which she set down on the polished marble next to him. Steam curled up in the chilly pre-dawn air that he had barely noticed.

"Cocoa?"

His pinky slipped on the E string. "Sure. Thank you."

While she nestled her back against the glass door, bringing her satin clad knees to hold up her own cocoa to mouth height for her to blow on, he plucked out a few last chords before setting the guitar aside and taking up his own mug. Something squirming and unsettling writhed about in his guts, telling him to both run for it and not move a muscle at the same time.

"I can't see Big Ben," she said quietly.

"I think he's on the other side of the city—behind us."

"You've been to London before?"

"No no. This is a first for me too." He blew and took a sip. It was rich, and not as hot as he usually drank his coffee. But that worked best for cocoa, right? Wait, when was the last time he'd even had hot chocolate…?

"Will they let us go explore a bit?" The excitement in her words was impossible to miss.

He paused to think about that, savoring the chocolate as the years without it kept spreading on in his memory. "From how she's been in the other cities, Mai will probably want to tie us down to the hotel unless were needed for rehearsals and whatnot. Apparently it involves too much extra work with organizing security and to let us wander."

"Oh." She seemed to visibly droop.

They sipped cocoa in a not quite awkward silence, taking in what sites could be seen at the butt-crack of dawn—or before then, so maybe the butt-hole of dawn?

"We could sneak out," said Tea suddenly.

He raised his eyebrows. "Don't you have a standard against being sneaky?"

She wilted even more. "But this is probably the only time I'll ever be in London—and we'll be back in time for rehearsals. Just a walk down the street."

He puffed a low laugh from his nose. "Justification of the sin."

"Since when were you my standards police? I'm not going to go to hell because I want to see more of London besides the inside of a hotel."

"Oh, I'm not policing you at all," he stood up, patting down his rear for dust and swishing the last of his hot chocolate around the bottom of the mug. "Though I heard somewhere that the road to hell was paved with good intentions."

"Oh, never mind." But she didn't sound angry, just resigned. She finished her own cocoa and followed him back inside where a groggy Bakura was flipping through channels on the tube, still in bed. Since he wasn't much into talking right after waking, Atem enjoyed some blissful snide-remark-free time as he flopped back onto the bed and watched the channel surfing.

Tea dug out some clothes from her bag and went to take a shower, which she didn't leave for a good hour, but once she did come out, her hair was still wet and she hadn't bothered with make-up, though he found that made little difference to him. Her lashes would have made most girls he knew envious, and the lack of makeup just made her freckles all the more apparent, which was always a plus in his book.

Hell, what was he doing? Did he want to encourage this?

Luckily, Manager Mai chose then to walk in to herd them all into their day clothes for practice. The London stage wasn't in a stadium, but in a regular show house, however large. Atem had to call himself down from admiring all the old time molding along the ceiling and balconies in order to get his equally distracted and drowsy bandmate's into line. Second time through the music, they were all sorts of screwy, as though they had left their brains back in America. Tea, however, didn't mess up once.

That girl really was unreal.


	9. His Demons

**I have way too many nightmares.**

9

Their London's ocean-crowd had an echoed, ear-bursting quality to it that the New York stadium didn't have, perhaps because it was in a smaller venue with a roof on top of it all. No access to the sky meant the noise had nowhere to go but back, up, around, and bashing down onto their heads like waves on the cliffs during a storm.

Thus, despite how much he was looking forward to being introduced to the British celebrity and party scene, a migraine pushed Atem into a moaning, blinded bundle that winced at the thought of going anywhere with noise.

"No wonder," said Joey, rubbing his temples. "My ears are still ringing. I'm surprised that place hasn't crumbled yet, frick."

Bakura just gave them his usual, condescending sneer and told them to man up, though Tea didn't look much better. Her eyes were glassy and she flinched when streetlights flicked past their windows. The only reason Atem didn't was because, after the first few lights, he kept his eyes closed. Even the most tame of lights seemed to push nails into the back of his eye sockets.

"No self-respecting rock star get's migraines from their own concert," said Bakura.

"We don't play rock," grumbled Atem. "It's alternative."

"Really? I thought we were kind of Indie, with a hint of acoustic," said Joey, kicking open the limo cooler for a beer. There would be no stopping at the hotel tonight. The limo was going straight to the after party.

Bakura let out a bark of laughter. "This argument again? Joey, give him some of that. Should help."

Joey handed Atem a Red Stripe from across the limo and Atem took it gingerly. However, he didn't open it. Somehow, the thought of swallow anything made him nauseous. He wasn't eager to make a repeat of his last failed digestive feat in front of Tea.

Even so, he managed a few sips, though it did nothing for his head. When the limo rolled to a stop, Joey and Bakura got out, but Atem stayed. So, unsurprisingly, did Tea.

He stuck out his eyes long enough to meet hers then made a vague gesture to the door. "You shouldn't miss this. You wanted to see some London, right?"

She hesitated, but declined. "I'm not feeling too well either. And…yeah."

"It's fine if you don't drink. These parties aren't just a cesspool of drugs and sex. You'll be fine."

"You haven't been to a London party, though." But she sighed. "If you go, I will."

He groaned. "Oh, come on…"

The little slide window separating them from the cab slid open. "Sir? Will you be heading back to the hotel?"

With a huge sigh, he set his beer into the cup holder and melted to the thick, carpet floor, spreading out on his back like a dead thing.

"Yeah."

On reaching the hotel, he had to laugh as he watched Tea all but roll out of the limo, just as floppy and exhausted as him. On a whim he pulled her arm over his shoulder and put his over hers, saying something about soldiers staggering in from the battlefield, though he didn't catch what he had said once the feel of her wormed through to his skin. Was his shirt that thin? Wait, he had left his leather vest in the green room. And his shirt. This was just an undershirt, thin cotton.

Luckily, she didn't seem to mind much, as she didn't pull away from him or cringe at his touch. Rather, she chuckled as much as one with a similar migraine to his would and played along until they reached the elevator, where he took his chance to draw away. His side felt starkly cold without her warmth.

"So," he asked, leaning against the elevator with half-opened eyes, ready to close them at a moment's notice. "How is it so far?"

"'It' is a very general term."

"Fine, being in the band—playing on the big stage. You made such a big deal out of your stage fright, but you seemed to manage it just fine." He flashed her the best smirk he could manage to counteract the embarrassment he was going to reveal. "I seized up on my first concert. Almost ruined it for everyone if it hadn't been for Rebecca…"

His insides, which had been buzzing and fluttering with the thought of pain killers—or, perhaps more accurately, on finding himself alone with her—chilled and curled closed.

Some of it must have shown on his face, for she asked, "Are you alright?"

"Just have a killer headache, that's all."

"But, with Rebecca…you guy's mention her a lot, but you always cut off right away, just like you just did."

Atem shrugged. "Such is the case with bad memories."

"You didn't sound like it was a bad memory."

The elevator binged and the doors slid open. Atem and Tea made their way out into the luxuriously decorated hallway and to their room two doors down.

"I don't hate her," he said, wondering just how much he wanted to tell. "Despite what the others say, it is my fault she left. I…did something wrong. It doesn't matter if I was drunk or not." He decided he'd leave it at that. The idea of Tea knowing the details suddenly broke him out in a light sweat and his stomach cramp, though he could find no logical reason as to why he should feel that way. Joey—or had it been Bakura?—had been right. Being part of the band, Tea would know eventually.

They reached their door and he fiddled for the key in his pocket. When he realized he'd forgotten his at the green room, he looked to Tea to find her staring at him, a probing depth to her eyes.

"Did you sleep with her?"

He flinched. "Is Jesus okay with you saying such things with a straight face?"

"You made a pass at me while you were drunk," she said, unfazed by the bluntness making his jaw drop. "I've heard stories that people are certain kinds of drunks, so I figured it wouldn't be a big stretch to think you made a pass at her too." She finally turned those spotlight blues to the door, pulling a key card from her pocket. At least she hadn't forgotten. "Well?"

He suddenly felt like he had just climbed out of a gooey tar-pit. He almost shook off his hands, as though to clear them of the sensation. Lead pooled at his feet and brought an all too familiar ache to his chest, though with the increased strength that had come with it since that morning when Rebecca had left.

He didn't answer her, even once the door was shut. Rendered speechless by her intuition, he made a beeline for the bathroom, where the little box of first-aid medications had been placed. At first, he thought he had shook her off; that she had settled for not getting a straight answer. But just as he popped out the pills and turned to the facet with one of those plastic water cups, he saw her standing in the doorway, holding two equally plastic cups of milk.

"Milk is a good replacement in the case of food when taking medication. It should make it easier on your stomach." She handed him a cup. "You looked a little nauseous back in the limo."

He took the cup. "You don't miss much, do you?"

"Oh, I miss plenty. You are probably just not use to someone noticing."

Which confused him. He was a performer with a lot of money riding on him—a high end commodity, even if he wasn't with the widely popular big leagues. Mai's job was to keep him in health. However, he couldn't help but feel that she was right, because although Mai nagged them into eating like health nuts and getting them personal trainers that worked them practically every day, they'd have to tell her straight out that they felt sick before she would notice. Bakura and Joey said she was too caught up in herself and her boobs ("Seriously, dude, her cleavage is like a black hole, it sucks you right in!"). Atem had simply never thought of it. It had always been that way with his mother. Usually it was him noticing she was sick, not the other way around. It wasn't anything personal. Being a single mother with only a high school diploma just did that.

He tossed the Advil down with the rest of the milk. Tea did too, though more slowly.

Just as he thought he was home safe, Tea said, "So you slept with her. Was she drunk too?"

He sighed. The icky feeling was increasing. This was retarded. "Barely, not compared to me. She remembered it all. I didn't remember a thing."

He caught her frowning in the mirror and looked away, a retort instantly rising on his tongue should she say anything about it being his just desserts for sleeping around—God's judgment or whatever the hell.

"Isn't that normal for you folk?"

Again, her frankness threw him off. "You folk? What, us sinners?"

She made a very unlady-like noise. "Seriously? You too?"

"Sorry! Just joking," not really. "I get what you're saying. Well…" he rinsed out the cup to busy his hands, which had become fidgety. "She put a lot more meaning into it than I did. Throw in a third world war for the nitty gritty, and the conclusion: she felt she couldn't work in the same band as the…as me." Atem shrugged. "She had her own line to the music world before meeting us, so I guess it wouldn't be too much of a loss for her, so…"

"So she had the freedom to try and get away from the pain."

The sympathy in her voice brought his head up to stare. "Wait, has this happened to you?"

She shook her head and brought up her hands, as though to surrender. "Oh, no, I'm virgin through and through, and plan to stay that way. I just, well, from what I understand of the nature of sex is that it reaches down to every aspect of your being: emotionally, mentally, physically, blah blah blah, so it just makes sense that a lot of pain can come out of mis…of stuff like that."

He turned off the water and tossed the plastic cup. His eyes were starting to smart from the bathroom light. "Yep."

A warm silence fell between them—or, perhaps, just warm for him, as he found his armpits wet and his hands still clammy. He moved aside when she went to toss her cup as well, though he hadn't needed to. The bathroom was plenty large.

"I'm sorry," he said to her back. "For what I did while drunk, I'm…"

His throat suddenly closed up as it really hit him. As if Rebecca hadn't been enough, he had almost done it again…

"It's cool," she said lightly. "I'll just not be around you when you're drunk, or keep a big stick on hand." Then she turned and flashed him a smile that reached her eyes. "It's okay. Really."

An urge to confess to her that it wasn't okay came and went, buried down deep with the rest of his demons.

"You planning on taking a shower?" she jabbed a thumb over her shoulder at said shower. "I can't believe how much concerts can make you sweat. It's like everyone's eyes turn into mini-suns or something." She shuddered for effect.

"I will after you," he said. "Like I'd go to bed with my hair into a hardened spike-ball like this."

"You have before."

That didn't amuse him, though she said it teasingly. "Thanks for the milk."

"Yep! Now go relax and put a wet rag on your eyes or something. That should help."

 _She's like one of those country-side grandma's,_ he thought as he closed the door behind him.

But, in a weird way, he liked it.


	10. Enrapture

**Being an adult sucks because you have to motivate yourself to run in circles-literally, else you'll become fat and ugly and sick. Oh, and you're not getting paid enough to actually not feel like a slave.**

 **But hey! At least your parents can't tell you what to do, right? That's nice.**

10

They weren't given much time to recover before Mai had them herded onto a train. As he nodded off against the seat, he drowsily registered Tea geeking out about some tunnel that went under the English Channel and wishing she could see up through all the water.

It was probably because of that comment that he dreamed of drifting up into the sky, just to realize it had been tropical waters all along, yet he still couldn't reach the sun. He wanted that sun, hoping it was the same as it had been in Egypt, when the heat had pressed against his skin like hot metal. He couldn't get warm enough here. Everything was just so muggy.

He woke up when Bakura shoved at his shoulder.

"France awaits," he said. There was no mercy or softness in Bakura's wake up calls. Maybe it was because the white freak had perpetual shadows beneath his eyes. Atem knew for a fact that Bakura did sleep, though how much or how well had always been the question.

Though Atem and Joey stumbled along like the living dead, Tea bounced ahead, her head snapping in every which direction. She stopped abruptly at a metal, cylinder like corral next to the wall with a man inside.

"Is he peeing?" she asked with thin alarm.

"France isn't as prudish as we Americans," said Mai curtly. "Don't stare."

"Think those urinal stalls are called 'iron mans' or something," Atem managed to grumble. He had nothing to be amazed at. How much different was it from American public urinals?

Sadly, limos were constricted to after concerts, and the band was ushered into a taxi-van, or rather the mini-coup version of a van. It was all the same to Atem, though, as the taxi smelled like every other city taxi. Ugh, why did people have to be so god damn disgusting? Or namely why did they have to smoke?

It was about noon France time when Mai showed them to their rooms, or rather, the suite which was more or less a small apartment.

"Check this out, guys," said Joey from down the hall. "The toilet and the shower have separate rooms! Prepare your asses for surprise hot-shower attacks, nar nar nar!"

"You flush the toilet while I'm showering and you'll wake up with a rather interesting tattoo you can't recall getting," said Bakura calmly as he peered into one of the bedrooms. "Two of us are going to have to share, and it isn't going to be me. I've already done that once."

Atem groaned. "Please tell me they're at least king sized."

"Do I look like a mattress vendor to you?"

"Aw, come on, I'm not that bad," said Joey, who was still grinning in the doorway to the 'water closet'.

Neither Atem or Bakura answered to that. They had spent enough time with Joey in sleeping quarters that it wasn't even funny anymore.

"I could sleep on the couch," said Tea from somewhere in the back of one of the bedrooms.

"Forget it," said Atem. "We're not going to do that to a girl."

"Everything's so white," said Joey. "Do they bleach the walls or something?"

"Okay, tours over," said Mai from the front doorway, where she had been watching them all with business like courtesy, interspaced with yawns. "I'm taking you for coffee and lunch and then it's rehearsal time at the venue."

"Oh, guess Tea can't come, since there's coffee involved," said Bakura as he made his way towards Mai. "Wouldn't want her standards to be compromised."

Atem was more than a little pleased when Tea popped her head back into the hallway with a tart retort of, "Seriously, Bakura? You know, you're not the only one who can give weird tattoos."

"What? I was trying to be considerate," Bakura said with obviously false innocence.

She gave him a dead panned look. "Right."

It was nice to know that innocence didn't mean she couldn't defend herself.

At the restaurant, which turned out to be a little café outside in the sun, they all had a good time watching Joey trying his hand at speaking French to the waitress, who endured him with tight-lipped humor. It was moments like these, in the sun at the table, with the back of his head and stomach hurting so hard from laughing, where he tried to lasso time in place. The sun wasn't quite the hot press of metal, but it was warm, even if still with the hints of London's mugginess. But it was the company that really made it.

The good mood continued through rehearsal, which they were all actually awake for. There were few, if any, mistakes and Joey all but howled with confidence when they turned into the green room to get ready. Once more they'd be playing in a closed venue, but it was much larger and more modern than the little show house in London, so hopefully they wouldn't get their ears blasted out.

While they were revisiting Joey's attempts at French in their hair stylists' chairs, Mai came in with a frazzled looking older man. It was only thanks to the tag on his black polo shirt that Atem knew he was the theater director.

"Change to the lineup, boys," she ripped off the song line up on the nearest mirror and stuck up the new one. "Atem, I'll fetch your cello so you can run through it with Tea."

"What?" despite Otaga's protests, he stood and crowded round the new sheet over Bakura's shoulder with Joey. Tea had the grace to be considerate of her hair stylist and stayed put.

Near the end of the list was the song Atem had been hoping Mai would manage to take off, or at least make unavailable: Rebecca's solo, "Scrape Me Off."

Atem slinked back to his chair, Bakura gave a short, closed chuckle, and Joey said, "Now that's just rude."

"What?" asked Tea.

"You listened to track 8, right?" Atem asked.

"Yeah…" then her eyes widened. "Oh no…"

"'Oh no?'" quipped Bakura. "How quaint."

"More like fucking-shit-hell," spat Joey. "Don't worry, I'll say it for you."

"But I-I-I've never…" this time she all but tore her head from the stylist's hands to give Mai her horrified, pleading face. "I don't even sing that good."

"You sing fine," said Atem, who had little patience for her attempts to be modest or whatever the crap she was being. Someone obviously that talented shouldn't have the right to say such things.

"You'll do fine," said Mai, who, in a twist of events, actually sounded somewhat motherly. "You're the most talented person I've ever met, and I meet thousands of hot shot musicians every day."

"I hope you're including us among those hot shots," said Joey.

"Depends on the lighting."

"Lighting! What does that have to do with music?"

"We've got plenty of time to practice," said Atem, growing more aware of the need to comfort her, despite his misgivings as to her reasons for being nervous.

"Playing an instrument is completely different from singing, though," she said fingers dancing every which way. "When you get nervous you can't control your breathing and it gets all over the place and—"

"—and you've been doing it fine until now," said Mai. "Just do what you usually do."

"But I wasn't up front and alone—"

"You're not going to be alone," said Atem firmly. "You'll have me."

"And a bit o' me!" broke in Joey. "Don't forget my part."

"Oh yes, our key instrumentalist," Bakura crossed his legs. "The occasional thrum of a drum, near the end, that you miss unless you're listening really closely."

"Hey, smart ass, it's the little things that make or seal a deal."

"Point is," broke in Atem. "Your panicking isn't doing anything."

"But I can't—I can't—I'm trying—" Abruptly, she sucked in a breath through her teeth and closed her eyes. "I'm sorry, can I go to the bathroom for a minute?"

"I'm almost done, sweetie," said the hair stylist. "Can you wait?"

"Need to hurl?" asked Bakura, looking far too happy at the thought.

Atem kicked at Bakura's chair, twisting it. Sadly, a lock of his precious white-dyed mane had been caught in the stylist's comb and he got a nasty yank. Atem just gave Bakura's reflected glare in the mirror a pointed look.

"Grow up, man," he said. "If she flops, we all flop."

Joey hissed. "Shouldn't've said that—"

He must have seen something Atem hadn't while his attention was on Bakura, for Tea suddenly bolted up from her chair and ran towards the girl's bathroom in the back. The door took its sweet time hissing close, but no sound of violent upchucking followed. In fact, it was dead quiet.

"It's okay," said Otaga to Tea's flustered stylist. "We have time."

Tea did not reappear, even once they had all put on their make up and costumes. Mai had already knocked and checked in on her, but said she was just sitting in a corner of the room, not throwing up or sick or anything. Eventually, their time to practice came ticking by, and Atem, wondering how much of Tea's nervousness was just an act, knocked on the door.

"Tea…we need to practice."

The door opened and blue eyes poked out.

 _Desert sky._ He shook himself of the thought. "You coming?"

"Yeah. Yeah I'm coming."

As he settled down at his cello, Tea sat in a folded chair across from him as her stylist set back to her hair.

"I'm really sorry if I've ruined up timing and—"

"Then don't waste your breath on excuses," he said, more curtly than he intended to, because he wasn't immune to nerves either. "And save it all for singing. You ready?"

She took a deep breath and nodded.

Knuckles stiff about the bow, despite having the position ingrained into them, he settled into the opening notes, closing his eyes as he did so. The belly of the cello vibrated against his knees, humming against his tension.

 _Back, back, back to the minaret,_ passed through his mind. A line to a future song? Even so, he imagined himself back there, even though the memory hadn't been exactly reassuring. But it had been beautiful, and even though this particular song didn't have as strong of a middle-eastern theme, the deep-bellied thrum of the cello reminded him, as it always did, of that certain, raw something within him that ached at the call for prayer.

When he didn't hear her at first, he thought she had missed her cue to enter. Just as he hesitated at the end of his bow, though, he heard her, clear, tentative, and fighting to be strong.

"… _knowing you will never come to me, I'll not move, so scrape me clean, scrape me clean, and leave my bones to bear."_

Sat in the green couch on the other side of the room, Bakura and Joey, the latter equipped with a massive, bongo like monster under his arm, listened.

As the song went on, the little inflection Rebecca would always do steadily vanished from Tea's voice, till, at the last verse, nothing of Rebecca remained. In its place, the strength she had lacked at the beginning had returned, along with something sweet, high, and oddly plaintive.

Second time through the song, it became less of a fight to stay together and more of an exploration. With each drag of his bow, his throat would do its usual hum with the vibrato of the strings. But that voice that died to get out of his throat would instead come out of hers, and while he had remembered a sensation like this when he had played with Rebecca, he had never felt it to this depth. Tea's own style, which he had yet to hear until then as she had been working to immitate Rebecca, filled him with warm impressions of sweet earnestness and gentle efforts.

 _Who is this girl?_

Before they could go through it a third time, Tea turned to Mai, concern furrowing her brow.

"I find it much easier to do it if I don't try to sound like Rebecca," she said hesitantly. "Is that okay? I mean, it's okay if it's not, I can—"

"Calm down," said Bakura (more like barked), his head hung somewhere in line with his shoulders. "You'll do."

That was as close to praise as Bakura ever got, at least with those he wasn't close with. When Tea glanced at Atem, he tried to convey that through his reassuring smile, even if his cheeks didn't seem to want to work quite right just then.

"Hey, what about me? How am I doing?" asked Joey. He punctuated his question with a heady patter of the bass bongo.

Bakura rolled his head to the side. "You're a positive diva. I'm sure all the boys will love you."

Joey flashed his teeth. "Does that mean you've fallen in love with me?"

The look Bakura shot him spelt death in many grotesque ways, one of which would probably include having all your nails pulled out and candles set under your prone form.

Joey bit his lip and scooted as far away as the couch would allow.

The rest of pre-performance prep past by Atem in a daze. Cello music kept playing in his head, along with words to go _back, back, back to the minaret_. At one point he found a notebook in his hand and scribbled down a song he felt more than read. The sounds of the words came to him more than their meaning. Somewhere along the line Bakura told him to stop twirling his hands like a girl, and he realized he had been imagining a bellydancer, but not in the slinking, seductive way. But rather how he had seen it that one time in passing in Egypt. Slow, methodical, as though the girl were caught up in wonder of every small muscle in her body.

But this was the pop industry. And it wasn't like he could just suddenly change tunes and hire a bellydancer. Not to mention if he even tried to hire a bellydancer in America, he'd just get a straight out exotic dancer, the kind found in strip joints.

The sudden black before the curtain rose slapped him awake like a splash of cold water. For a brief, horrifying second, he forgot what song they were starting with and wondered where his cello had gone.

This stage didn't have platforms that rose up. So warm red lights came to life, bringing them out in shadows. The usual sound of people cheering came to his ears, as always, like an ocean.

He took hold of the microphone, grounding himself.

What in the world had come over him?


	11. Having the Devil for a Friend

For one of the few times in his life, he found himself at a party, sober. The bourbon in his hand called to him like the night to the fatigued, but he found himself unwilling to leave his current state of mind. It was as though he had been caught up in an intoxicating dream, and he wanted to know how he had gotten there in the first place. The deep, innate sense of rawness that he played to seemed to be renting, desperate more than ever, and yet in a somehow sickeningly pleasing way.

 _Round the coals of your desire, because no one ever cared for the heat of your fire. H_ e brought the bourbon to his mouth, hesitated, and put it back down. _Back, back, back to the minaret._

Why did that memory still strike him so? Standing in that smelly street, surrounded by robed, crouched bodies, the call to prayer spiking across the overused speakers hung on the street lamps. He hadn't bowed down. He hadn't even thought to. What had he to pray to? What could God ever do for him? It wasn't like the Almighty stopped suffering in the world, so Atem couldn't expect any help in that regards.

 _Burn out, crumble, left for scorn—because they lost the date that you were born._ He brought the glass to his mouth and, this time, took a gulp. The burn quenched the thirst. _Back, back, back to the minaret._

"Lost yourself in an existential crisis again?"

Bakura slid into the lounge chair besides him, a dry martini held at his fingertips like lace. The venue they had found for the after party in France was different from the smoke and neon lights of New York. It had a heady, almost red lighting, with a murmuring atmosphere and lounge chairs about short tables that edged the outside of a wooded dance floor. Couples danced about it with varying skill, but skill all the same. Atem had had his eyes on a pair near the center that had been caught up in a breathless tango. Even as Bakura set his martini onto the coffee table between them, the man lowered the woman, somehow wrapped about his leg without even touching him, into a deep arch across the floor. The milky mounds of her breasts reach towards her throat.

"Or is it the atmosphere that has you?" asked Bakura, having followed Atem's gaze to the dancers.

"Why do you ask?"

Bakura nudged the bourbon with his knee.

Atem sighed. "I'm not some alcoholic. I don't always get drunk."

"Right. You only _usually_ get drunk, otherwise you just can't handle it all."

"Good grief, I have some pride, thank you."

"Sure." Bakura took up his martini again. For a few seconds he watched the twisting couple with Atem. After a small sip, he added, "I don't think she should stay."

Somehow, Atem knew he wasn't talking about the female dancer. "She's good. But that's up to her, anyways."

"She's a prejudice, judgmental little bigot," Bakura's dark eyes swerved back to Atem. "But if that were all, I wouldn't say anything."

"Even when that was all you still said something." Atem swirled the amber liquid in his cup and brushed his bottom lip against the edge.

"You're saying you already know my concern?"

"Probably something along the lines of 'you're falling for her and you're gonna crash, and as a friend I'm morally obligated to give you a disclaimer.'"

The profile of Bakura's smirk showed off his sharpened canines more than ever. "On the contrary, go for it. Corrupt the little virgin. I'll help."

Atem nearly spat out his bourbon, but settled for setting it down none too gently. "Whatever gave you the idea I was that kind of guy?"

"While sober," Bakura tagged on, still eyeing the tango, though his fanged smirked just widened.

Fury rose up first. Then a begrudging, heavy acceptance that made him reach once more for the alcohol and down it. In the back of his mind Atem wondered if Bakura really were like Satan in using the truth too well. It was almost as though Bakura had heard of Atem making a pass on Tea while drunk, though Atem knew he didn't have to.

"Some friend you are," said Atem, closing his eyes against the buzz warming his blood.

"Yes, because there's your disclaimer."

The chair cushions creaked and he heard Bakura pick up his empty glass and walk away.

 _You won't just break yourself_ , Atem pulled from that. But, then, why would Bakura care if he broke a girl he didn't even like? But no, it wasn't just her. More like Bakura was warning him of just the kind of shattering he would do to himself if he forced her to compromise her standards, which he would have to do if he ever stood a chance to be with her. Perhaps it would have been far easier if Atem had been the kind of man who was okay with lowering someone to his level, given that he ever thought they were on a level higher than him to begin with.

He thought of Rebecca and got up to get himself another drink. Bakura caught him half way to the bar with another bourbon, which he handed him. Atem took it, both somewhat hesitantly and thankfully.

And once more he found himself arm in arm with Joey, thoroughly smashed, as they walked into the apartment. It had taken three more bourbons to drown out the echo of cellos and minarets. It helped that Joey was drunk too, and everything was funny. The world was great. Everything was fine and dandy and just GREAT great great—and he didn't even feel like puking! Yeah, puking sucked.

The two of them found themselves facing the wall of doors like they had just walked into a labyrinth.

"Which one?" asked Joey. "So many."

"How did we get here?" asked Atem with a laugh. His jaw was doing funny things too.

"In a carrrrr—this one!" Joey face planted into a door. "It a cool door. Feels cool. Openit openit—OPEN A SESAME!"

And suddenly Joey vanished, along with the door. Atem wasn't worried for long, though, because Tea appeared in his place dressed in those cute pink satin jammies. There was something wrong with his eyes, though, because he couldn't see her freckles. Her features were too blurry, and her lips were frowning.

"Joey?" he asked. Did she do something to him? Wait, why wasn't she looking at him? At her feet? Waitaminute… "JOEY!" Happiness returned.

"Try the next door," she said, still frowning.

He squinted at her. "Why you unhappy?" Down at Joey. "Joey, why she un—why is she unhappy?"

"Because Open-a-Sesame here woke me up." Oh wait, that wasn't a frown. That was an all out scowl—no, wait, Tea didn't scowl. Anyone in pink jammies shouldn't scowl…wait…she wasn't wearing a bra underneath that satin… "And will you please stop staring at my chest! Room! Now! Both of you!"

She crouched down to Joey, which Atem pouted at. He couldn't see her nipples if she did that. Wait, nipples…freckles?

Tea made a grunt of annoyance. "What the—he's asleep? No way."

"Can I see your nipples?"

"Good crap, no! Fine, take my room." She stepped over Joey and gave a tug at his leg. "Hyah! Giddyup, Joey! Ugh, where's Bakura…"

Atem found himself giggling at the mention of Bakura. Oh yeah, that's what had been so funny. That's how they got here. "He got himself some ass."

A muffled snicker came from Joey on the floor, with the hissed end of the word 'ass.'

"Eww, and whatever, good night."

And she started walking away from him, down that twisty hall with too many doors. Something broke in him, like the snapping of a pencil.

"No! Tea! Don't leave me!"

To his faint surprise, and pleasure, she actually stopped and looked back. The satin jammies looked nice on her butt too—wait, why was she moving again? Noooo!

The door clicked closed behind her.

Joey snickered again. "You said aaaaassssss."

"Yeah, because Bakura—"

"Tea's aaaaassssss!" crowed Joey, who had suddenly gotten onto his side and was shaking with whooping guffaws. "'You like dat aaaaassssss!"

Wait…had he said all that out loud? About the pink jammies?

"You sure did, nummie nuts."

"You know nothing about nuts, Joey."

"I sure don't, I ain't gay." Joey took a deep breath and let it out in a wheezed, "Gaaaaaaaaaayyyyy. The 'a' feels good to say. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy."

But when Atem went to the door that swallowed the said cute ass in pink jammies, the knob was locked. Somewhere, in all his disappointment, there was a glimmer of sober relief.


	12. She's Nice

Atem had a lot of scary questions when he woke up in bed with Joey.

But then his swollen, throbbing brain had the mercy to remind him that this had been their agreed arrangement. Joey and him were to share a bed. Still, how had they gotten there? Thank God they were at least still in their underwear. But why did he remember something about gay? Why was he even awake? Ugh, the humanity…

And then he saw the steaming mug on the bedside table by his head, along with a little plastic cup of pills. He turned his head, squinting even through the dim light that got through the curtains. The other bedside table had a mug and plastic cup too. It wasn't too far of a guess to assume Tea's delivery of said mugs and drugs must have been what woke him up. He wasn't the heaviest of sleepers, unlike Joey. Now that he was awake, he wasn't entirely sure how he had managed to sleep through the snoring or the fact that Joey's limbs stretched out across every bit of the bed, but then, he had had some scary questions when he woke up. Man flesh on man flesh. Not his cup of tea.

Blearily reading the clock, he downed the pills and sipped at the coffee. It wasn't gourmet, by any means. But it had a sort of homey, rustic taste. Not bad for someone who didn't previously know how to use a coffee machine or drink it.

He had just got his pants over his hips when Mai came in, announced.

"Could you knock?" Heaven forbid she had come in just a second earlier.

She rolled her eyes, which happened to be shaded a light pink today that matched her billowing blouse that stopped just short of her belly button. "Oo, boys in underwear, like I've never seen that before. Don't give me that look, I asked Tea if you two had any funsie bedmates before coming in. Now _that_ I don't want to see."

Atem frowned all the same, but pulled up his shirt from off the floor. It was only then that he realized his bag wasn't where he had left it, nor was Joey's. In fact, the only bag he could see was Tea's non-descript, last-minute-buy red bag. Just as Mai snapped the door behind her, the uneasy realization that he wasn't in his own room washed over him.

 _Oh god, please don't tell me I made another pass on her._ He glanced at Joey and made a face. _And with Joey, nonetheless._

Once he's shirt was buttoned, he took hold of Joey's ankle and methodically walked across the foot of the bed till the whole of Joey rolled, still snoring, slid, and landed bottom half first onto the wooden floor. Joey gave a shout.

"Whazza? Whazza? Uuuhhhhh, my head."

"Coffee and drugs on the table you're about to bang your head into."

Joey muttered some choice words to Atem for waking him up, but pawed blindly above his head for the coffee.

"It's hot." Atem found his other sock just as Joey gave a loud yip. "Like I said."

"Go away."

"I already am."

And so he was, clutching his own coffee as he waddled down to where his bag of clean clothes waited. He found the bed unmade, obviously slept in, but his bag untouched.

A quick breakfast later, in which he hardly tasted the food, they found themselves once more in an airport. An energetic Tea, looking comfy in jeans and an old tee that must have been the shirt she had managed to save from Mai, managed to dip into just about every little store along the way without breaking pace with them.

As Mai had intended, they arrived at the terminal with their carry-ons ten minutes before boarding. The three bandmates, including a very dark eyed Bakura, wilted onto their seats. Joey even commandeered Atem's shoulder as a pillow, bro rules aside. Mai stood out by the walk way, talking on the phone with any one of her various assistants.

It was a few minutes of drowsy stupor before Atem realized the bouncy Tea had struck up a conversation with a nearby woman who bounced a baby in her arms. The only reason he probably realized they were talking was because Tea went over and took the baby from her. Exotic dreams of baby-napping were crushed, though, as Tea stayed by the woman and bounced the baby, which Atem did a double take on. Did babies come that small?

"Thank you," said the woman in a heavy French accent, but with clear enunciation. "It been so hard with my back, I can not believe it go out on me like that, I still young, thank you."

"Oh no, thank you," said Tea, whose gaze was on the baby, a little smile curving her lips. "For trusting me to hold your baby, he's so precious! Do you have some painkillers? I have some Ibuprofen in my purse if you need any."

"I-bee-pro? I not know that, I not know how it act with my body."

"It's probably what your doctor's given you. That's what he gave my mom—though I suppose France could be different. Let me know if you want to try some, I promise you can find it in a store and it's harmless. How about you just lean back and relax now? He's already starting to close his eyes."

The woman, who couldn't have been older then they where, thanked her again and again, momentarily caught Atem's gaze, and then leaned her head over the backrest of the chair with a heavy sigh. Meanwhile, Tea continued to bounce back and forth, making shushing noises with each sway. The baby, which Atem hadn't even noticed was fussing through his fatigue, had indeed quieted and stilled.

Tea happened to notice him watching and smiled at him.

"They like white noise," she told him quietly. "And movement. Reminds them of the womb."

But Atem just stared. A part of him couldn't quite believe what he was seeing, even though there was nothing special about it. Yet for all the world, he would have sworn that Tea had somehow choreographed this, because she almost seemed to glow with some innate light. He even took a quick glance around him for a stray light bulb or skylight he might have missed. Not to mention girls cradling little babies like that…

He suddenly felt a little guilty. He hadn't even noticed the baby was crying, he was so tired and muddled. His eyes had been closed from the headache, but even if they weren't he knew he wouldn't have even seen the people around him, let alone that one of them could have been in pain.

When the flight attendant announced the beginning of boarding, Tea held the baby for the woman as she gathered her things and slowly stood, even holding to Tea's elbow at one point for support. She held open a babysling hung about her torso and Tea very gently folded the now sleeping infant into the cloth. The mother's face glowed with the force of her smile and gratitude to such an extent that Atem was beginning to wonder what else he had missed. Bouncing her baby to sleep couldn't have been all that Tea had done.

As Mai impatiently ushered them into line, he heard Bakura give a low snort.

"Miss perfect showing off her saintliness in an airport. Many much applause."

"What happened now?" asked Joey.

"Just focus on walking."

Atem somehow found himself confused by Bakura's antagonism. Why was he making such a big deal out of it? If Joey or him had been awake and not hung over, they might have offered to help her too. Tea had just been…

But even as he watched Tea file onto the plane in front of him, he could still see that light, and yet not light, about her. No, it wasn't quite a glow. People didn't glow. That was ridiculous. And all it had been of her was sweet, she hadn't been showing off. Who had she to show off too? It wasn't like she had anything to gain from their opinions, she already had stupid-crazy amounts of talent and standards no man could touch.

As Tea slid in to the window seat, Mai gestured Joey in next, as she had their seat numbers in hand. Joey, however, stepped aside and nudged Atem forward with a non-too-inconspicuous pat on the rear.

"You said ass," he whispered, grinning like a maniac.

"What?" But he wasn't about to start an argument over seating, so he slid into place next to her.

What he didn't expect was the sudden jump in heart rate, or the buildup of sweat in his armpits. Even after Joey had done his usual nodding off and Bakura had slapped on his big, white headphones and closed his eyes to show he did not want to be disturbed, Atem's nerves had yet to settle.

Tea, who hadn't an electronic to her name, had pulled out a beautiful, leather bound book, which turned out to be a journal she proceeded to write in. Not wanting to be rude, he tried not to read over her shoulder, but as the flight moved on, he couldn't help catching a few words.

… _he reminds me of Stephen, in a way…why would they assume that I think I'm perfect?...I want to listen to him alone, not just in a recording or on stage, because there's something…maybe if I ask…_

When he finally spotted his own name, he couldn't keep quiet. It just wasn't right.

"Um, look, if you want that to be private…" he said quietly.

She looked at him, then back at her book, as though she hadn't been sure he had been talking to her at first. To his surprise, she just shrugged.

"It isn't like I'm keeping any secrets in there, but I get what you're saying." She smiled at him, and he couldn't help but notice the freckles across her nose again. Yes, if he tilted his head just so, maybe he could see…Delphinus? One of the Ursas? "Did you read that I want to hear you play some time?"

Again, her upfront nature threw him off. "Me? The cello?"

"Yeah. I was writing about how recordings often don't do the music justice, and I want to watch your fingers as you do the accidentals—or are they triplets?" She leaned back in her seat and closed the book. "Or is that too weird to ask? Sorry if I made you uncomfortable."

"No, you didn't. Most people…" Most people didn't say upfront flattering things like that unless they wanted something from you, or were flirting. But she seemed to honestly mean what she said. "…aren't so blunt."

Her smile fell, and a look of apprehension took place. "Oh…yeah. I'm told I can be that way when I shouldn't be. I hope you know I didn't mean anything weird by that. I honestly just want to listen. The cello is one of my favorite instruments, you know?"

He thought he could hear more behind her words, something to do with whatever she had been told about her bluntness, but there's was nothing solid enough for him to base an outright question on.

So he just tried to project reassurance as he agreed to play for her sometime and let himself be pulled into a light conversation on various instruments and their ease of play vs. the quality of sound.

At some point, close to the beginning of their descent (wow, short flight, at least compared to the great Exodus across the Atlantic), Tea said, rather offhand, "I want to play in such a way that I convey all the things I can't say. Words just can't say it all, and I think there's a lot I can't say to just anyone. Actually, now that I think about it," she looked out the window, where the blue almost bled into gray from the bright sunlight. "Some of the few times I don't feel so alone is when I'm playing music."

"Is that with or without us?" he asked, unable to keep out the coquettish taunt with that. He would have loved to hear that she had become invested in their band more than the few days they had been together allowed.

"Both," she said. "When I play with you guys, I feel like we all could understand each other, but…" she hesitated.

"What?"

"I guess…I always remember that I'm playing Rebecca's part, in Rebecca's way, in Rebecca's place, so that's sort of like..."

Abruptly, she broke through the settling gloom with a broad smile and a renewed pep to her tone. "Ha, I'm getting all sentimental and all that jazz. Music is just sort of that universal language, so it's easy to connect to everybody, you know?"

"Yeah," he said, hesitant himself. Was he supposed to say anything about that hinted complaint? If she had such a problem with playing in Rebecca's place—no, he couldn't think that. They needed her just as much as she needed them. She knew that, and she hadn't sounded all that depressed at all. Probably just a passing thought of how nice it would be to play her own songs. Yeah, that was it.

"Wanna play a word game?" she asked, flipping open the journal again and tearing out a page.

"Where'd you get that?" he asked. "It looks new."

"Oh, I bought it this morning with some of the money Mai gave me. She let me look around while she was getting you breakfast. I thought about getting you guys' souvenirs or something, since you wouldn't be up to getting them yourself, but I figured that would be presumptuous of me since I don't really know you well enough to be getting you gifts."

It wasn't till later, when they were finishing up said word game as they waited for the okay to get off the plane, that Atem realized how thoughtful that was of her. Not uniquely or over the top, but nice nonetheless.

 _She's nice,_ he found himself thinking, with that surety of thought one used for facts. _Like, actually nice. Not just trying to be or to make us think so. She's just nice._

And despite what most people thought, genuinely nice people were not so easy to come by. Atem's general belief was that most people were nice until given a reason to not be, which just meant they were giving back however others treated them. But Tea had been given plenty of reason to begrudge them, even from Joey, who had slid in a teasing remark about her religion along with Atem more than a few times, all in good fun, but in hindsight still insulting.

And then there was all the sexual harassment he was slowly remembering doing while drunk…

A tickling, inflated sort of warmth had settled around his twittering insides.

 _She's nice._

 **Author's Note:**

 **I'm updating early because...because I'm having a hard time wanting to be alive. The only things that are stopping me from finding a way to die is being afraid of hurting my son or not being there to make sure he's taken care of and happy, and not being able to return back to God. Just...things have been so hard for so long, I can't see how they'll ever get any better. And even if they do get better, bad things will happen anyways and no body really cares to have me around-which I know, logically, isn't true. My husband would be devastated, and some members of my family would be too, but I'm having a hard time caring and I don't know why-or maybe I do know why, but I'm just...I'm so tired of it all. And these episodes keep happening and I know my husband is sick and tired of them. I'm sick and tired of them too.**

 **And since I don't think I'm hard core enough to call suicide hotline, I'm settling for this. Maybe I'll post some more chapters from my backlog, just 'cause nothing is worse than leaving an unfinished story. Maybe not.**


	13. Romanian Frappacino

**Sorry I didn't get this up on time. My mom came to visit and I got preoccupied with that. To the guest reviewer who recommended the anonymous online chats over the hotline, thank you. Thank you for telling me I'm not alone. Thank you for being here. I'm sorry if I just unloaded a buttload of awkward with that last chapter.**

 **And with the hand up, I have gotten an idea as to how I can help my family.**

He hadn't even known Romania had anything to offer outside of toothless gypsies that thought themselves witches, and that was just based off of the stereotype. What he did find waddling off the plane somehow just as tired as he was getting on it, was that Romanian people had the usual European coloring, but with a heavier percentage of black hair, black eyes, and olive skin. No one smiled at them. No one tried to say hello. And if eye contact occurred, it was swiftly done away with. The streets they passed had dull, no-silly-business look about them, and quite a few looked in sad need of an update to modern times.

"Romania is relatively poor compared to the rest of Europe in part to the fact they didn't leave Communism until forty-so years ago," said Tea, as though she had swallowed _Romania History for_ _Dummies_ while they weren't looking. "Their traditional dishes are heavy on tomatoes and meat, and if you call anyone a gypsy be ready for a sound tongue lashing, or whip lashing, whichever comes on hand. They're also comparatively conservative to the rest of Europe and have strong Catholic roots."

"Wow and thank you," said Joey, yawning, though looking more awake than Bakura or Atem probably felt. "Did you happen to catch any useful Romanian phrases while you were reading wiki or wherever you got that?"

"Uh, not really. And even if I had, I couldn't pronounce half of it. Romanian's this weird squash of Latin and Slavic, and since English is Germanic—"

"Nerd down. Way down," said Bakura. "You've shown off plenty enough this morning. Leave the lime-light to the professionals."

Tea did some half way squirm between a glare and a blush. Atem did, however, catch her shoulders rising slightly and her eyes going to her feet, which riled his ire. Sometimes he really couldn't stand how much of an ass Bakura was. Yeah, all three of them could be real priceless piles of turd when they wanted to be, but self-made-Albino-vampire was feces number one.

He'd have special words for him tonight. Whether or not Bakura would hear those were a different story, but Atem had his ways. They hadn't been able to make this band work without some degree of cleverness on the cellist's part.

Until then, he'd concerned himself with Tea. Joey caught on quick enough and joined Atem in asking her various questions about the sights passing them by in the taxi taking them to their hotel. Her knowledge wasn't nearly as encyclopedic as Bakura mocked her for. She had just done some light reading that morning while they were all sleeping (probably while she had been making them coffee). Somewhere in the back of Atem's mind, a small voice wondered at her energy. She had woken up earlier than all of them, had been woken up by them at some unknown hour the night before to be kicked out of her room, and still was bouncing around on the sidewalk the moment they got out.

"I want to look around!" she yipped. "This is the first time we've gotten to a place with daylight to spare. Come on, Mai! Let's go find some shops and some weird Romanian food!"

Atem sighed and readied himself to counteract Mai's grumpy comeback. She hated feeling like a babysitter and had almost always made attempts to mash their desires to wander when out of town for concerts.

And was turned on his head, as a warm, glowing smile spread across her face.

"Of course, sweet heart," she said, shocking Atem even further. The crocodile using endearments without a drop of sarcasm?

Joey let out a befuddled, "Nyegh?"

Bakura just gave a grumpy puff that sounded like an unamused old dog. "Whatever. I'm sleeping."

Despite the sandpaper under his eyelids telling him to follow suit, Atem found himself trailing after Mai, Tea, Joey, and two unassuming bodyguards dressed in inconspicuous t-shirts and jeans, with an over shirt to hide the armory hung on their belts. Mostly non-harming weaponry to disperse crowds or warrant authority. They didn't talk much to them, but mostly to each other in quick, whip-like Spanish. They wouldn't be protecting the president anytime soon, but they'd do their job in a pinch. Besides, their fan-base wasn't entirely out of hand in Romania like it could be elsewhere.

 _Crack-sniffing, one-hit-wonders._ Where did that jerkwad even get ideas like that?

Especially once he caught sight of a newspaper and magazine stand on the side of the road, or namely, the front of a quick-print review-sometimes-tabloid journal.

And it had his face on the front.

Or, more accurately, it had Tea's as he played the cello besides her. Unfortunately, the news splashed on the cover was in Romanian.

"Mai!"

The girls and Joey stopped and followed his finger to the stand. Mai made a beeline for it with a mad clip-clop of heels as Joey slung his arm over Tea's shoulders.

"Lookie there, pretty miss, you're on the front page."

"That's not always a good thing," said Atem warily, flicking at Joey's wrist—hard.

Joey recoiled his arm back with a hiss. "What was that…" he stopped. Then let loose a Chesire smirk wide enough to cut his face in half. "'Scuse me, I almost forgot. You can take the honors."

Before Atem could properly respond to that, Tea was already gone, flown to Mai's side, acting as though she hadn't even felt the boy's arm on her shoulder or noticed what had happened.

That irked him almost as much as Bakura's assholery. Was she so completely unaffected by boys, then? Let alone him? Then again, he shouldn't be so irritated. He should be grateful he didn't have to deal with the embarrassment…wait…would it be embarrassing? Wasn't he a man? Wait, what? He shouldn't—Bakura's warning—

Screw it. Whatever. Just past the stand was a tiny Starbucks. Chocolate. He needed chocolate and a frappacino with the power turn his brain into Pop Rocks. Screw girls. Screw the world.

"Well, aren't you moody as a girl with Aunt Flow," said Joey, falling into step besides him.

"Shut up. And don't follow me."

"Hey, I want a beverage too. Got the nappy drags."

"Then will you at least stop it with the teasing? She's not interested, nor will she ever be."

Joey actually fell a little quiet at that, and Atem managed to focus on ordering his frappacino, which turned out to be harder than he expected when he was confronted with the fact that the teller's English was broken and hardly there at all. Not to mention he seemed about ready to pee himself with excitement for some reason. A fan? Or just someone happy to practice their English? At least he dragged out his manager, who also didn't know a spat of English and ended up pulling yet another employee, a tiny spit of a girl with the traditional dark Romanian coloring. She looked completely unamused and unimpressed with, not only him, but life in general, and Atem found himself thinking that, if there really was such thing as Romanian witches, this girl would be it.

"What do you want?" she asked, in clear, if accented, Romanian.

That broke Joey's silence. "Holy crap, you sound just like Dracula! Say some more."

The girl gave Joey a dead panned stare. Then turned her attention back to Atem, expectantly. Seemed she didn't want to speak more than necessary now.

Atem gave his order, she punched it in, then handed him his double chocolate muffin with tame courtesy and watched with dead-man's enthusiasm as Joey hopped up.

"I didn't mean to offend you. I just think your accent sounds really super cool. And sort of sexy, if you think about it."

Her eye twitched. "Tell me that is not inappropriate to say in America so I can have a reason not to be insulted."

"Insulted? I just complimented you—and hey, a whole sentence! Super cool. Super cool."

She sighed, gave her manager a droll stare, which the manager exchanged with a pointed glare, then sighed again.

"What do you want?" she asked.

Joey leaned an elbow on the counter. "You're number. I want to fall asleep each night to the sound of your voice."

The girl paused just for a moment to give him an expression of utter disbelief before tearing off the order-sheet she'd been about to scribble on and stuck it to his face.

"You are a filth munching maggot."

With that, she slammed the pen down and marched away, leaving her manager and coworker aghast. As the manager fluttered after her, spewing what could only be heavy Romanian reprimands. The boy with the failing grade in his English class managed to parrot Atem's order, which since Joey was in so much shock, he took as a yes, punched it in, and accepted Joey's outstretched money.

Atem's mood had become all-forgiving and light when Joey sat down, chocolate muffin and frappacino in hand. Joey had gotten punishment enough for his teasing and more.

At Atem's amusement, Joey put down the muffin he'd been about to eat and frowned.

"I don't know what you think is so funny. She's totally thrown off her guard." He lifted the muffin to his mouth. "Probably doesn't even know how to handle a guy this hot hitting on her."

"Sure. You keep telling yourself that."

"She wasn't that pretty, after all. Probably doesn't get much in the way of attention."

"If you say so."

"Flat as a board."

"Mm-hmm."

"Freaking nothing but bone and skin. What, are people around here so poor they have to starve?"

"The other two looked plenty fed to me."

"Yeah. Then maybe she's just anorexic."

"And maybe you should stop talking, because she can understand everything you're saying and can probably hear from over the counter, where she's gone back to cleaning dishes."

Joey blanched and looked up where, sure enough, the certain black-haired girl was all but throwing parts of a coffee maker into a sink. Her long black ponytail could have given the unwary passerby whiplash from how quickly she jerked her head.

Just then, Mai and Tea burst into the shop and scuttled over to them. For a minute, Atem's view was overtaken by the backlit view of Tea in her white, bouncing lace, bows, and pink knee-length skirt. Her eyes had gone all but blue with the pinpoint of her pupil from the bright light.

"Mai used google translate on her phone!" she said. "Lookie! Lookie!"

It was only then he noticed the half tabloid, half review mag onto the counter, along with Mai's phone, which Mai snatched back.

"He has his own," she snapped.

"Sorry," said Tea, giving Mai a tiny smile. "Not having my own kind of makes me forget sometimes. Do you have a translator on your phone?"

"If not, I can probably download it," said Atem.

Ten minutes later, in which he lost Tea to a cup of hot cocoa and, surprisingly, the grouchy witch girl across the counter, he watched as his phone eked out the basic translation of the title page.

 _From unknown to star overnight_. In a subtext, it said: _Could this new prodigy bring new heights to_ Millennium Sands _, or over shine them all?_

"Rather wordy, aren't they?" said Atem, who found that, once it translated to English, the page actually looked like a cheap imitation of the Time's magazine. "How'd they get this written and published in one night? This can't be reliable."

"I wouldn't be too quick to judge," said Mai, back to her normal, no none-sense self now that the 'sweet-heart' was busy chattering to the witch. "It takes money to get journalists in the right place at the right time. He takes some pictures, writes up an article, and sends it before you two are even back from clubbing. Overtime, even."

"Okay, yeah, but front page stuff?" Atem waved the magazine up in emphasis. "I wasn't on the school journal or anything, but I know they plan this weeks in advance." Not to mention there had to be a grain of salt in what Kaiba said about their popularity.

"Perhaps the editor is a fan," said Mai flippantly. "Hurry up with your treats. I want to actually see something besides the inside of a coffee shop before we have to head back."

It turned out what was the slowest part about getting out of the coffee shop wasn't the speed of Joey's and Atem's coffee enjoyment, but peeling Tea away from her new best friend, who had transformed from witch to…a smiling, less intimidating witch.

"You've got an email address, right?" Tea had her new leather-bound journal out and ready.

"Of course," she said, though now the pleasant company made her words almost purr, or perhaps that had been the accent, as Atem was starting to hear why Joey had laid it down so heavy.

They waved good-bye, Tea skipping along.

"I can't believe I found someone like her all the way out here!" Tea all but squealed.

Just as Atem wondered about Mormons and their take on lesbians, Joey asked, "Like her? You mean grouchy and a general bitch?"

The look Tea gave him was one inch shy of searing bacon to a crisp.

"No," she said, tartly. "She's a Jimmy Hurst fan." Her glare turned blissful. "And she said she had all his albums and would be happy to share them with me. All of them, on high def headphones."

Atem chuckled and, since he happened to be walking next to her, dared a playful nudge of her chin with his knuckle. "Watch out, there, you almost dropped your drool."

"Jimmy Hurst?" Joey asked, sounding as though he suspected it was some form of bitch-claw-formula for scratching the eyes out of innocent men.

To his immense pleasure, Atem beat Tea in answering.

"He's a musician who specializes in cello based music. He's known for his haunting, Gothic gypsy melodies."

"And he has these high cheek bones you could cut yourself on," said Tea, the verbal drool now more than apparent. "And always wears this black, Indiana Jones type hat and duster and then how his fingers move as he plays."

"Woa, watch it. Almost don't sound quite virgin, there," said Atem, meaning to joke, but violently wishing to recant it once it was out of his mouth. What happened to his guilt about teasing her on her beliefs?

Tea blinked at him, confused. "How so?"

Joey gaped at her. Then laughed. Before he could say anything, though, Mai gave both Atem and Joey a swap on the back of the head. They protested loudly, despite it not hurting all that much.

"Stop your baby crying and your pervy jokes," she said. "Be considerate, will you?"

"What about all the perverted crap you pull?"

"Around Tea? Not at all, because I'm a mature adult, unlike you two."

"I'm plenty mature," said Joey with a swing of his head that brought his face angled against his shoulder and towards her with a lewd smirk. "My offer to prove that is still up."

Mai gave him another smack upside the head. Harder this time.

Though it did give Atem thoughts of his own, mainly in remembering how Tea had asked him to let her watch his fingering as he played the cello…


	14. Peer Pressure

**I've been working on a really huge present for you all this past week. :) It's been a ton of work, but it involves the publishing of my next book. ^.^ I'm going to be starting a campaign of publishing a full, complete book every month. I've been setting up websites and oneshots galor to celebrate it's coming out and everything!**

 **Release date: September 1st**

14

"So, when you say you want to watch me play, you mean while you're not singing or playing anything, right?"

He just stopped himself short of asking if she needed them to be alone as well. One half of him just wanted to try at hearing her say yes, while the other half was more down to earth and much less suicidal.

"Yeah. If that's okay?" her stylist had her head turned to the side and was trying something new with her hair, though there wasn't much one could do with a A-line cut short hair, Atem imagined. But then, he wasn't a stylist.

"How's that burn of hers coming along?" asked Otaga.

"Pretty superficial. Mostly flakes now," said her stylist.

Atem tried to ignore them. "Yeah, that's fine. I can do that after the concert, if you want."

"What about your, um, revelries?"

"Yeah, man, what about them revelries?" asked Joey, sounding as innocent as a terrorist with a bomb.

"It's Romania," he said flippantly, hoping that would be explanation enough.

"I hear the Romanian night scene is actually one of the country's greatest attractions," said Bakura lightly. "And the women here are starving for a man who isn't washed up."

"That's not racist at all," said Tea.

"I also hear men have a thing for blue eyes here," he continued, head back, face pleasantly impassive. Atem's Bakura-shit alarm started tingling. "How about, instead of pulling away our band leader for yourself, you join us for once?"

Joey, Atem, and Tea all started up.

"Stop asking—"

"She already said—"

"Jeeze, man, what are you going at?"

Bakura raised a hand towards them as his stylist tilted his head the other way. "No, no, hear me out. Her problem is being tempted to drink or getting laid, right? I propose we keep her safe from that and swear to never ask her again—never to even hint at it—if she'll just come to this one party. We can even leave whenever she wants. And, well, if it's temptation she's worried about, wouldn't not being 'tempted' over and over to come to a party in the first place be nice?"

Oh yeah. Those Bakura-shit bells were at a hearty jingle now. But a conflict had risen up in him. Bringing Tea to a party would be fun, drinking aside. If this place was anything like the one back in France…images of the tango-dancing couple rose to his mind, along with the romantic, sophisticated atmosphere.

While Atem was having that inner conflict, Joey wagged his head indecisively and said, "Well, it isn't like we'd let anything happen to her, true."

"I can protect myself," said Tea curtly. "The answer's still no."

"So Mormon's aren't allowed to dance?" It was out of Atem's mouth before he could think otherwise. A fantasy of himself and Tea on the dance floor, with those long legs of hers in those little pink, strappy heels twisting about him, had flooded his brain.

"What? No, of course not. We have dances—"

"Where you play anything made before 1866," said Bakura mildly.

Tea glared at them in her mirror as though Atem and Joey were in on it too. "I'm not Omish. I actually love dancing. Just not to 'have sex with me now' orgy music like they probably play in your 'fine night-time establishments.'"

Atem winced, while Joey laughed. Okay, night clubs didn't just play orgy music, thank you very much. That being said, Atem had been to more than one with strippers dancing in cages and plenty of, uh, well, not Jesus music, that was for sure.

"I can see why Kaiba finds you so amusing," said Bakura, who had been allowed to bring his head back upright again. The girl had pinned up his hair into a messy sort of ponytail that hid half his face in straight, knife like cuts.

"How so?" she asked.

"You judge that which you've never been to, seen, or experienced with a violent surety without so much as flinching. You've never lived the life of a celebrity, and yet you judge all of them to be moral-less tabloid fodder with no interest outside their careers, drugs, and sex." Bakura turned his head to give her his signature black, pitiless stare. "You dare get irritated with any who judges you based off of how the media has portrayed your lifestyle, and yet you don't even hesitate to judge ours? What happened to what you said? 'If you're looking for judgment, go somewhere else, because I don't have the time?' Well, too late, sweet heart. You've judged us and all we do before we've even started."

While each of Bakura's words weighed in Atem as true, to a degree, he thought the last part could have been an exaggeration. She had been with them to three concerts now and had to deal with Atem and Joey's runoff from said 'revelries.' It also hadn't really bothered Atem much that she had thought that way about night clubs or music scene because, well, there was a grain of truth to that, right? Or had he simply never thought of it? Probably the later. There wasn't much he saw beyond the gray outside the spotlight's euphoria.

From watching her face in the mirror, however, he saw her take in every one of Bakura's words.

And he could sympathize. He'd been on the receiving end of Bakura's Satanic scything of truth, warped just enough to serve his purpose, many times.

"I don't think all celebrities are like that," she said quietly.

"Yet, when given an opportunity to make it big, those are your reasons for turning it down."

"That isn't what I said."

"It's what you implied."

"It's what you inferred," her voice had jagged, cheated edge to it that expressed both her indignation and hurt, while not nearly hiding the fact that her throat had tightened up.

Otaga and his three female assistances stayed quietly out of it, though Atem caught them exchanging glances. The one by Tea had a hand hovering over head, fingers twittering in dismay, as though searching for a way to comfort her.

Joey looked as though he wanted to defend Tea as much as Atem, but didn't have any ammunition to do so. Bakura was good at doing that: reasoning you into a corner. Yes, they both knew that those weren't her exact words and that she didn't think that way of them, but, then, Joey and Atem weren't exactly spitting models contrary to the judgment Tea had given to the pop idol world.

Besides, there really wasn't any harm in getting her to have a little fun with them.

"Fine," Tea said quietly. "I'll go to your party."

And the moment her hair dresser finished with the side sweep of her hair, Tea once more retreated to the girl's bathroom. This time, Atem heard the quiet click of a lock. It helped that the doors and walls of the Romanian green room were old and did nothing to block out sound, as the steady rumble of oncoming attendees filling up the atrium had been playing in the background.

Bakura rolled his eyes. "Running away to cry because she's being told to have fun. Pitiful."

"You shouldn't have done that," said Joey, his voice uncharacteristically low.

"It's called persuasion, Joseph. It's not my fault she can't handle the truth about herself."

"Persuasion involves giving facts to the contrary," said Atem, both irritated with Bakura and himself for not stopping him. "Not guilting people into doing what you want them to do."

"Want?" Bakura tilted his head to the side and looked askance at him. "I could care less whether she came or not. But her hypocrisy is irritating the hell out of me, that I will say, now will you two calm down? I didn't insult her or anything, I just pointed out the truth."

"You were a jerk," said Joey, volume rising.

Otaga chose this moment to finally move in. "Alright, people, that's enough. You can continue this once you've finished performing and don't have half a million riding on your ability to play nice, in more ways than one."

Atem didn't see her again until he stepped into the darkness of the stage's wings. He probably wouldn't have even seen her in the darkness if it weren't for the dim red-light from the stage reflecting off of the sequins of her sleeves. She stood exactly where Mai told them to wait until the signal came to step out on stage and take up their instruments.

He stepped up to her, somewhat reluctant to say what he knew he should. "You know you don't have to come to the after-party."

Tea turned her head and pulled out a black ear bud he hadn't seen. "Oh, Atem. Did you say something?"

Ugh, but he wanted her to come. "What are you listening to?"

She gave him a half-seen smile and held out the ear-bud to him as she shifted the other one to her ear. "Have a listen."

He had to pull in till their arms touched to reach the ear bud. Electrifying tingles whizzed across his skin from the touch of her warmth through the nigh-sheer turquoise sleeves.

The familiar, belly-thrumming tone of a cello flowed into his right ear. Mixed in was trilling voice of a girl singing in what must have been Arabic, or at least a dialect from that area. The extreme flat key she sang in gave the song an aching longing that drew out a sigh from him.

"It's one of the songs the girl from the coffee shop sent me," Tea half whispered to him, her eyes also closed.

"There's something sacrilegious about listening to another musician's music before your own performance," he said.

"Not at all. Doesn't this song make you want to bake in the sun while you listen to it?"

Instantly, he thought of the hot-metal feeling of the Egyptian sun. The dark, techie filled wings suddenly felt chilly.

As they listened, Tea started to sway, as though to dance, bumping her hip unintentionally to his now and then. He thought of bellydancers and felt his own throat hum along with the cello.

No sooner had the song ended then Mai appeared, giving them the signal to get on stage. Bakura and Joey came from across the other side, stepping lightly through the musky red light. Once they had their places, the curtain lifted, and a sea of excitement washed in to mingle with the first striking notes of Tea's guitar.

" _I wouldn't have mind if you broke through,_ " Atem purred into the microphone. The stand was like ice in his sweaty grip. " _Wouldn't have mind if you said no. But you were nothing as though you knew, that I didn't care. I didn't care at all."_

As he always did when he sang this song, he wondered if his father even knew that his boy sang, let alone on this stage, singing a song written for him, or rather, of his absence.

The lights burned away the rest of his regrets concerning Tea and the upcoming party, and euphoria took its place.


	15. No Doesn't Mean Can't

15

To her credit, Tea's knees weren't completely pinched together as they walked into the cosmos of the night club. Outside it had looked like an unassuming brick building that may have been a factory once upon a time, but inside it had all the works: mirror like bar with red stools, balconies, stairs, and two long, silver poles that ran up to the ceiling on either side of the modest, neon lit stage, where a DJ swung his head to the work of his hands. Fog covered the floor and drifted up in thin veils, blurring the forms on the darkened balconies. Lounges had been tucked into the corners with game tables. People had already filled the room, and the bodies twisting in time to the music on the dance floor gave a surreal, collective view.

Before anyone could announce their arrival, Joey crowed, "Yes, I love this song!" And vanished into the forest of swaying bodies.

"You think they're going to use those poles later?" asked Bakura with barely hidden glee.

"Poles?" Tea squeaked.

"Relax, this is going to be fun." Atem put his hand on her shoulder, laughing as she jumped. "No one is going to eat you. Want to dance?"

"No can do, Pharaoh, it's an orgy song," said Bakura with a high-brow, mock cynicism.

"All the flashing lights could give someone seizures," said Tea faintly. "I-I-I think I'll just, um, they have normal juice, right?"

"'Course," said Atem.

"Even milk," added Bakura, "for all the little wee babies like yourself."

A bit of her nerve was replaced by irritation as she gave him a light whack on the arm.

Atem gave Bakura a little shove too. "Go haunt a corner of girls or something."

Bakura gave him a mollified glare before flashing one of his fanged smirks, eyes jumping between Atem and Tea knowingly.

"Alright, alright, I can take a hint, third wheel and all that nasty stuff. Just no sex in the bathroom, okay?"

"Bakura!" Atem barked.

But Bakura was already gone, the echo of his maniacal laughter the only thing left behind.

Face hot, he turned his attention back to Tea, who didn't look either embarrassed or amused by Bakura's farewell tease. An excited jitteriness he thought he had left behind in high school tightened his throat and made his stomach clench and his jaw feel clumsy. "Juice, right?"

"Yeah." She pushed back a strand of hair behind her ear, sending the arm full of glittering bracelets Mai had adorned her with jangle. His eyes once more followed the line of the falling bracelets down her arm to her narrow, curving waist, hugged by the little, tight designer tee Mai had squeezed her in, along with a tiny, flared mini-skirt that would have been even better if Tea hadn't insisted on wearing jeans underneath it, though it gave her a punk-star sort of look. Mai had tried to get her into a little black dress number that made both his heels pop up and down (Joey and he had gotten ready early and entertained themselves by watching the mini fashion parade), but Tea turned it down flat. No showing shoulders or cleavage, and the skirt had to be knee-length, all of which the black dress didn't have.

Once he had her on a bar stool, her knees closed the last distance between each other untill it looked like even the bottom of her shoes would be pinched closed.

"Some juice and a bourbon on the rocks," said Atem, sliding in next to her, forcing his heels to remain still.

"What kind?" asked the bar tender in an accent even thicker than the coffee girl, and skin a deep mocha. His black hair swept before his eyes in a stylized curtain hinted at a secret without being emo.

"Um, do you have cranberry?"

"Of course. You want anything mixed with that?" Even though Atem knew the bar tender's silky smile was probably given to everyone, he felt an unnerving need to hurry him along.

"No. Just cranberry. No alcohol or anything," Tea's voice nearly cracked.

The bar tender inclined his head and went about working the vast rack of beverage related mechanics behind him.

"Try to relax," said Atem, taking another excuse to touch her by pushing down on one of her shoulders, which had risen to her jaw. "We're here to have fun. Nothing bad's going to happen."

"Kinda hard to relax with that pounding," she said, shaking her head. "No. It's more those notes."

He frowned and turned his attention to the heavy-beat song being played, but couldn't see anything wrong. There weren't even any words to the song. "What's wrong with it?"

"They're just…nothing." She accepted the little glass of red cranberry juice from the bartender with a smile. "Thank you, sir. What do I owe you?"

"You're the little miss with the _Millennial Sands_ , aren't you? Don't worry, it's on us." The bar tender slid over a glass of amber liquid and crystal like ice, but didn't leave. Rather, he leaned forward, arms folded. "What's worrying you? Don't like crowds?"

"No, crowds are fine," her shoulders started to rise. "I just, um, I don't think I should be here."

"Course you should," said the bar tender, rolling his head just right so that dark curtain parted enough to give her the full brunt of his dark eyes. "Why don't you tell me about yourself? I find talking usually eases me up a bit."

"Actually," started Atem, just to realize he didn't really know what to say. It did get the bar tender's attention though, and Atem was gifted with an apologetic grin.

"Sorry, am I crossing a line? I'll leave." He straightened.

Tea blinked rapidly, confused, juice in both hands. "What?"

But the dark-haired man was already down and away to the other end, where a trio of clucking girls in dresses that would make a towel look modest sat.

Atem sighed and pushed down on her shoulders again. "Seriously, relax. What are you so afraid of?"

"I'm not afraid," she insisted, her eyes flashing to the amber liquid in his hands. "I'm just way outside my comfort zone. This isn't my idea of fun."

"Then what is? You said you could dance, didn't you?"

"I can dance just as well as the next person," she said, wrinkling her nose in an adorable fashion that pressed her constellation of freckles into an Ursa Minor.

"Then why don't we try it? A new song's come on, do you like the notes any better?" It did pound a bit less, not that he had any clue what she meant by 'notes.' That could mean a variety of things.

Tea looked out onto the dance floor for a moment, than back at her drink. "Most of that's just bumping and grinding, doesn't that embarrass you?"

"Not really," he glanced back as well, but thought he could see a bit more than just bumping and grinding. "You don't have to dance like them. Why don't you show me how you dance?"

In the soft lighting, he thought he could see her nose darken as she said, "With you watching?"

"I can dance with you. You won't look silly. I can even teach you a bit, if you're feeling weird, that is."

She pouted and took a sip of her juice, smacking her lips at the tartness. "At least it tastes like normal juice. Romanian blood juice."

Atem took a large, burning gulp of his bourbon for courage and stood. "Come on. Just for a minute. I promise I won't ask for the rest of the night if you don't like it." His heart was picking up pace, and he was worried for a moment that she'd feel how sweaty his hand had become.

Beneath the rumble of music, he thought she gave a little whine. She sighed, however, took a long gulp of her cranberry juice like he had of his bourbon and stood up. She was most definitely blushing now.

As he led her out into a clear space on the dance floor, dodging the occasional dancer, she said above the music, "Why do they have to play the music so loud? I can hardly hear myself think."

"I think that's the point." He turned, having found a clear enough spot. "You ready?"

"No."

A couple chose then to shuffle past, doing just what Tea had said—bumping and grinding in a flowing wiggle that broke up in a fit of light laughter as they twisted about each other.

Tea just gave him a pointed, droll stare.

"That was one couple," he protested.

She just ducked her chin down, sighed, and lifted her hands above her head as though to stretch.

And as easy as breathing, she slid into a dance.

Atem barely had the mind left to remember that he was suppose to be dancing too as she turned and twisted better than he had even imagined. There was no pointed bumping of her ass, no shimmying, no sexy body waves, but there was a definite skill, like something he would see on the stage beneath that burning savanna sun.

Somewhere in all the smoke and lights, he picked up on her beat and drew in close, eyes peeled for his chance to reach through to her as he danced. He wanted to draw her in, figure out their own way of a duet, even if it failed and they ended up just crashing together and laughing. He found himself wanting it so bad it made his throat hurt. He didn't want to be drunk for this. He wanted to remember every moment, remember every move she made. He especially wanted to remember the wide smile that broke across her face as she did a spin, head tilted back and mouth open for rain.

Halfway through a second song, which thrummed with a chanting drum, Atem noticed that a fair number of people had backed away, giving them space.

And as easy as she had begun, she stopped. Having realized all the attention she had attracted, she snapped her limbs back to herself like a turtle withdrawing into its shell. He could almost hear the clack of her heels banging together. She shuffled back, flinching when a guy whistled and shouted something in Romania.

"That's good," she squeaked, all but scurrying to the bar.

Atem rushed after her. "Tea! Wait! You were doing great!" More than great. A little out of place compared to the writhing style of the other clubbers, but beautiful nonetheless.

"We're not supposed to leave our drinks alone either," she said, snatching at her cranberry juice and hugging it to her chest.

"The bartender is paid to make sure that doesn't happen," said Atem with a roll of his eyes, his heart still several paces faster than it should be. "Come on, I know you were having fun!"

"The song's almost over anyways," she said, taking a big gulp of her cranberry juice. "Jeeze, it gets hot in here, don't you think? I mean, with all those bodies—"

Atem sighed heavily. He knew when he was beat. At least he'd been able to see a little bit of it. Now, if only he could have kept her dancing for just a little bit longer, he could have figured out a rhythm or space to slide in and move alongside her, maybe take her hand.

He went to pick up his bourbon, but didn't drink it as he leaned heavily against the bar.

"Why are you so afraid?" he asked.

She brought her glass down from another swallow. "Because this isn't a place where the Spirit can dwell, which effectively means I'm alone if I'm faced with temptation or danger." She took another sip.

"Spirit?"

"Yeah, you know, the Spirit of God? Not to mention it just feels all icky and wrong and weird—like you take something pretty and delicate and make it do something crude and poopy…" her words were slowing down. Her lashes had lowered as though she were looking down, but she had yet to actually look at the floor.

He laughed. "Poopy?"

"Sex is sacred," she murmured, and he had to lean in to hear her correctly. "Special. Not suppose to be this…abandon…nothing…dark…"

Tea swayed. He realized what was happening just in time to catch her. His bourbon dropped, shattering across the floor.

He shook her. "Tea? Tea, are you okay?"

Slumped over his arms, she didn't say anything.

The bartender appeared. "What broke? Do I need to call someone?"

Atem bared his teeth, a protective fury rising up in him like a snake. "What was in that juice?"

The bartender threw his hands up, startled. "Just ordinary cranberry juice! I swear!"

"Then who did you see by it?"

"I didn't see anyone! No one did anything!"

A low moan came from the girl in his arms. He leaned down to hear her grumbled words.

"Home. I want to go home. Daddy? Atem, this is weird, I want to go home."

Atem straightened, heart and dread tight as a fist about his throat. He had promised. They had all promised. And she hadn't even lasted through two songs.

"Call a cab," he said, not caring to hide his displeasure.

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir."


	16. A Cello's Prayer

Ten minutes later, Atem was in the back of another smelly, European cab with a drowsy, muddled Tea in his lap watching the world go by with glassy eyes.

"Daddy, daddy," she'd mutter every now and then.

"I'm so sorry, Tea," he said, hoping she could at least understand that. "I'm taking you back to the hotel, okay? You may feel weird, but you're safe, I promise."

Those hooded, glassy eyes swerved to him. He couldn't help but be aware of the feel of her head resting against his shoulder, or the warmth of her legs across the crook of his arm. She wasn't too heavy, by any means, but she had a comforting weight about her as well.

Her eyebrows arched up into a little, sad steeple. The glassiness poured out into tears.

"What'd I do wrong?" she asked.

 _Now there's a guilt jerker._ "You didn't do anything wrong. I was just an idiot trying to make you dance."

"I'll dance," she murmured, watery eyes dropping to hide behind those dark lashes of hers. "I'll dance. But they stole my shoes."

A bit of amusement broke through his guilty dread. Perhaps he could get a little fun out of this. "What shoes?"

"Dance shoes." She raised an arm, mincing two of her fingers together like scissors. "Used ones. Can't ask for new ones. Not my money…I'm sorry."

He sighed. Nothing funny came from apologies. "You didn't do anything, stop apologizing."

She sniffed. "Why are my arms all sandy?"

"What?" Oh shit, was she hallucinating?

"I mean filled with sand." She lifted and dropped her arms. "Heavy. Everything's spinning. I want to go home."

"We're going home," he assured her. Guess he wouldn't get anything funny. At least she meant she was feeling lethargic, not hallucinating. Probably a typical club drug that would wear off eventually, he hoped. Aw, crud…

"Not there. Temple." She turned her face to his shoulder and mumbled something else. By the time he managed to shake her face free, her eyes were closed and her breath had fallen steady and even.

He half expected her to stay unconscious as the cab pulled up at the foot of their hotel and he used the toe of his shoe to open the door before the cabby could get around. The moment he shifted to get his legs out, though, she stirred and jerked up, face flushed and pupil's dilated.

"Wh-where? Where?"

"Calm down, we're just getting out of the car. Can you walk?"

He didn't even know why he asked, as he had little intention of letting her, but he wasn't Mr. Muscles. She even somehow managed to scoot a bit off his lap till her shoes tapped on the hard ground and sat up woozily. When she made no sign of moving, he stood, holding her elbows tight, which then turned into more of a pincer hold as he found her knees jello at best.

"Just put me down," she whined. "All swishy, washy—are we on a boat? I never been on…on a boat…or a plane, I like planes. Feels like you're shooting into space—GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR TOM!"

They had reached the doors when she belted that last part. Atem cringed and laughed, though it was tight through the effort to keep her upright, let alone moving forward. The lady at the front desk stared quite a bit, and he shrugged when she caught his eye, as if to say _'Drunks, am I right?_ '

At least Tea went down to a sing-song mutter the rest of the way to the elevator, where he found he had to use his knee to hit their floor's button. As the elevator jerked up, Tea's head flopped against his neck with a puff of musty, hot air across his Adam's apple. A weird little tingle shot through his body.

"Smell nice," he heard.

"Proper hygiene can do that," he said, smiling despite the misfortune of the situation.

She fell quiet, and he wondered if she had dosed off again. His theory was confirmed when the elevator bell chimed and Tea jerked back enough to half flop out of his grip. One of her unwary legs tangled between his and he barely caught them from toppling like bread, butter side down, on the elevator railing.

"It's okay, it's okay," he kept saying to the look of panic on her face. "Just the elevator bell. We're almost there, we're almost home."

"Home?"

Well, technically a rented hotel room, but more or less. "Yes, home. And we'll get you tucked in to your warm, soft bed—"

"No bed," she said abruptly, much like a toddler would.

"No bed?"

"That's bad," she wagged her head back and forth. "Bad bed. Bad boy."

"I'm not going to do anything to you," though he longed to do something to whoever snuck whatever cheap drug into her drink for thrills.

"But you smell nice."

He chuckled, even as they reached the door and he had to struggle a bit with her to reach his key card. "You make it sound like smelling nice is a crime."

"Bad Atem…" she muttered, just before nuzzling her face once more into his neck, though this time at a more awkward angle without the side of the elevator to support her.

The door swung open, and he half dragged, half carried her in.

"Come on, Tea, I need a little more help here." He hefted her up and kicked the door closed behind him.

Bad move. He had yet to turn the lights on.

"Dark," said Tea seriously.

"Yes, dark. Can you wait here for a minute?"

He lowered her to the floor and carefully felt his way around to the light switches. Once he got one, he went back to find her once more in a daze, pooled in the entryway like a glossy eyed corpse. He sighed and bent down to tug at her hands, wishing she'd blink or at least look somewhere else than at the lone light fixture. She mumbled something else that he missed as he hefted her arm over his shoulder and his arm about her waist. They hobbled through the tiny apartment that had once been a communist office building to one of the bedrooms. Apparently, Romania had had some seriously cheap hotel rates. But, then again, that made sense, as he'd never heard of Romania being on anyone's top vacation spots.

The bedroom was dark too, but orange light from the streets bled through the curtains and the light from the hallway painted the way to the wide bed in the center of the room.

"Here you go." He eased her in the right direction and let her plop down. When she stayed upright, usually light blue eyes dark with the width of her pupils, staring at him, he was caught between the need to laugh and the urge to call a doctor. At least she blinked when he waved a hand in front of her face. "You gonna be okay?"

"I don't know," she said softly, and for a minute she sounded completely sober, but she didn't look away from him. "Atem…"

"Yeah?" Why did it make him feel all tingly again when she said his name like that?

She blinked, slowly, lethargically, and her head keeled to one shoulder. "Cello?"

He frowned. "You want me to play right now? I don't think you're in a good state for that."

"You said after," she said, head tilting farther and farther. "I want…I want to hear…"

His hand shot out just in time to stop her head from bashing against the head board as she finally dropped. "You want to hear what?"

"Prayer. You pray, right? No, wait…" Her eyelids were fluttering. "No, wait, this is soft—go away. Bad, bad, I don't want to be bad. I don't want it."

"I already said I wasn't going to do anything." And though he knew it would probably be best to leave her to sleep, he found himself sitting on the bed next to her and justifying that he needed to make sure the drug in her system didn't have any other unexpected side effects.

Her hand splayed on the pillow besides her head jerked, popped up, then slid down where it bumped into his wrist and wrapped about it. She let out a heavy sigh and closed her eyes, humming some nonsense tune interspaced with sleepy, "'Tem 'Tem 'Tem"s.

He chuckled. "You know, you're rather cute when you're drunk."

She made no response to that, probably too far gone to register that he had said anything. He waited until she finally fell quiet before carefully turning her onto her side and pulling a comforter that had been rolled at the foot of the bed over her shoulders.

He didn't know how long he stood there, just watching. It was too dark to see her freckles, but he found he didn't need it to remember where they were.

At some point, he realized what a creep he was being and left, making sure to leave the door open so he could keep an ear out for her before heading to the kitchen for a late night snack.

 **September 1st is coming, guys! Get ready for it! :D I've been working my butt off to make it a special day. ^.^ I hope you enjoy my treats.**


	17. How Do You Know?

**To promote the release of the first book in a line of inexpensive Kindle books I'm starting to help put food on the table (literally), here is an early update! I'd put another one right after this one, but since that often confuses readers who just drop by and skim down to the latest chapter before seeing if there were any before it, I think I'll just wait for Monday. In the meantime, check out my new book I've been working so hard on!**

 **It's called "Wendy" You can find it on Amazon under the pen name T.S. Lowe. ^.^ I'll include its synopsis at the end of this chapter.**

17

Despite staying up late, he found himself waking up rather early—and without a headache. He couldn't remember the last time he'd woken up without a hang over, but he did remember far enough to know that he had been an early bird not too long ago.

…Wait…when did he start getting drunk so often? What did that say about him?

To avoid thinking about it, he got up and got to boiling some water in the kitchen. As he did so, he looked through the gift basket the theater company had sent them and pulled out a packet of earl gray. He dropped it in a mug and dove back in for a banana or something. He'd never been on the tail end of a hard core, fast acting sedative like that, but he'd like to think it was a little different than booze.

By the time the tea-pot whistled and he had some toast and jam on a plate, the apartment was still dead quiet. Somewhere in the depths he could hear Joey still snoring away. It was a gentle kind of stillness he had forgotten. It reminded him of an age gone by.

Tea stirred when he put the plate with the tea and toast on her nightstand.

"'Tem?" she muttered, squinting at him.

"You feeling alright?" A new fear of unpleasant after effects made him stay, concerned. Besides, it was the least he could do after she'd seen to his poor mornings.

She moved as if to sit up, then dropped back down with a moan.

"What…what…"

"I brought you some tea to help you wake up, since you told me you can't drink coffee."

She put her arm over her eyes. Her next words were in a shaking, tiny voice not unlike the one she had used before their first concert. "Atem, what happened to me?"

He had expected this, but it didn't help the taut uprising of guilt. "Somebody slipped something into your cranberry juice at the party, but I got you home and nothing happened. I promise, and I'm so sorry, it's part of a bartender's job to keep an eye out for those who drink and keep stuff like that from happening."

When she didn't move or say anything, he told himself it was probably a message to leave so she could wake up at her own pace, but he couldn't budge. Not until he knew she was okay.

The silence pressed on for a few, uncomfortable minutes, before she let out a quick, shaky breath.

"How do I know if I've had sex?"

So much blood gushed up to his head, it shouldn't be possible to stay conscious. But he jumped to answer her before he thought better of it—scrambling only for what little he did know.

"Well, I-I-I've heard from other girls that—and you're a virgin, so—you feel a little sore and achy, you know, down there—" his brain caught up to him, reporting the dangerous amounts of fire in his face. "You should probably ask Mai these questions."

"Yeah," she said quickly—but still in that little voice, which had grown even smaller. "Th-thanks for the…what kind of tea is it?"

"Earl gray."

"Is that a kind of black or green tea?"

Funny she should ask. "Black, I think."

"Oh."

"What?" Was she allergic? Did she not like it? "If you don't like it I can make you something else, it's the least I can do for, you know, what happened…"

"What happened?" Her squeak was nearly hypersonic.

Blood back, hands up. "Not like that! I promised that I wouldn't let anything happen to you and I wanted you to have a good time, but someone—I swear that doesn't happen all that often." Not that he would know, as no one had tried to rape him before. Drugging, on the other hand…an unpleasant idea tickled the back of his mind. One that involved a certain dyed-albino.

He tried to change the subject. "So, like earl? I still got hot water out, I'm totally fine making you something else. We have that whole basket."

"No, it's okay. I actually can't drink green or black tea either. Religion."

He didn't much care for this confusing sense that he had failed. Barely stopping himself from asking what kind of religion said drinking tea was a sin, he just wished she'd stop using that scared little voice. Nothing had happened. Didn't she at least know that he wasn't the kind of guy that would do that to her?

…He actually slapped his forehead at that thought. Of course she didn't know that. After all the passes he had made on her drunk.

"I think I'll just…"

Blushing, ashamed, guilty, worried, he backed out of the room, closing the door behind him.

"Hey."

Bakura stood in the door to his bedroom, ruffled from sleep and with far too happy a smirk on his face.

"How was your night?" he asked, looking pointedly at Tea's door and wiggling his eyebrows.

Atem straightened, all those icky, dark feelings of guilt percolating into a spear like fury.

"You drugged her drink," he said quietly, unsure of whether he wanted Tea to hear all this.

Bakura's grin weakened. "It's a little early to throw around groundless accusations."

Any of the serene peacefulness leftover from the quiet morning vanished and Atem found himself inches from Bakura's face, neck hot for a whole new reason.

"Don't give me that crap. You're poisoning pranks have gone too far. Do you have any idea how terrified she is right now?"

Bakura's dark, shadowed eyes narrowed. "You might want to take a step back, Pharaoh."

"You might want to get whatever snucked up your ass out and over this vendetta you have against Tea."

"For your information," spat Bakura, and Atem felt the spittle on his face. "I was trying to do you a favor—"

"How so?"

"Get your fat head away from me and use it. With how you kept pining after her, I figured you could use a level field—"

"By drugging her?"

Something snake-like, sly, and sickly friendly broadened across Bakura's pale features. "You can't tell me you didn't have even a little bit of fun."

Atem decked him, right in that stupid, self-satisfied grin. A bad choice on his part, because Bakura's face had little in the way of baby fat, but he hardly felt the pain through the boiling in his veins.

For a second, Bakura just stood there, his head to the side from Atem's blow and hair covering his face. Then, he spat out a thin spittle of blood and slowly brought his head back around, like a bad reenactment of a cursed doll.

"Oh?" he said softly, flashing his sharpened fangs made even more gruesome by the pink stain. "Is that how you want it?"

Atem only had the mind to feel a tiny twinge of uncertainty. Otherwise, he just fumed and widened his stance.

As expected, Bakura fought with no honor, if anything like that existed anymore. He slapped, he spat, he scratched, and all Atem had the mind to do was to hold his arms out and try to kick the crazy's legs out from under him, but Bakura just took him down with him.

Atem may have had more muscle and weight on top of the wiry pianist, but trying to get a punch in to Bakura was like trying to punch a flailing cat. He did manage to kick him off just as the door to Tea's room opened with a bang.

"Atem!" she cried.

Then Bakura was on him again, pulling hair and clawing and kneading his knees into Atem's gut. Atem slung his arm up, slamming it into the side of Bakura's milky head.

"Joey! Joey!"

Atem had somehow managed to get on top, and returned the knee to the gut gesture. But he hadn't any wind left after having it done to himself, and Bakura managed to jab his fingers into his eyes. Atem closed them at the last second, but it didn't stop the bolt of pain through his skull. Bakura's legs shut up through to his rear, throwing Atem face first into the carpet, but not enough to get the larger man off him.

" _What the hell!"_

A hand at the back of his shirt hefted him to the side. When Bakura tried to follow, a big foot jammed down onto his chest, knocking the breath from him.

"Break it up, or I'll kill ya both!"

Up the foot was Joey, who also happened to be the largest of the three by a good head and was the spitting image of a grizzly woken up from hibernation.

"He drugged Tea's drink!" Atem gasped.

"Eh!?"

Atem then saw Tea huddled in Joey's doorway.

"Seriously, dude? Come on, not even the first time was funny," Joey removed his foot by pushing off unmercifully.

Bakura curled onto his side, hand to his chest as he gasped for breath.

"He's done this before…?" came that little voice.

And, of course, since she always had impeccable timing, Mai had to walk into the flat then. She stared at the mess of boys in the hallway and the huddled up Tea in the doorway for a full three seconds before dropping the paper bags she held. In a blink of an eye she had her spiky stilettos inches from Bakura's head and fire in her eyes.

"Do not tell me you couldn't hold back from marring each other's faces for the three days left of our world tour?"

"I didn't do nothing—" started Joey.

"Bakura—" Atem pointed.

"I DON'T CARE!" She had this way of reaching the volume of a fog horn without rising in pitch, and everyone cringed. "All of you are grounded!"

Joey gaped, then scowled. "That is so not fair, I just walked out on this!"

"No excuses," she snarled. "If anyone gets a free out, it's Tea. Poor girl looks like my boyfriend's Chihuahua before he pees himself."

Tea flushed and closed Joey's door.

Bakura pawed his way up, the whites of his eyes bright with vehemence. "Bitch won't even go."

"What did you just call her?"

Those black and white eyes met hers, teeth bared. Blood trickled out a corner of his mouth, and red darkened one half of his face where a glorious bruise promised to develop. Bakura had never taken well to authority figures. It had always been the case. It was just one more reason why he and Atem clashed so often.

"You can't boss me around, hag. This isn't even any of your business, so if you know what's good for you…"

Bakura without his teeth dyed in blood and on one of his good days could terrify the passerby with just a glance.

Yet, true to her character, Mai just folded her arms and raised an eyebrow.

"Oh? Think you can threaten me?"

"You work for _us_ ," said Bakura. "Not the other way around."

"Correction, I work for Kaiba, the one who is paying for this whole trip."

"Is that all he's paying for?" The stretched lips curved into his Satan Smile. "You said your boyfriend had a Chihuahua? Rather small for such an ego. Does Kaiba know?"

Before the stillness of that statement could fully settle on the room, Atem staggered towards her.

"Mai," he started, Bakura's trespass on his tongue.

But the manager broke across him with one stomp of her four inch, knife-like heel. "Oh, you want to play that game? Because I really should say something to the authorities about your tendency to slip date rape drugs into people's drinks—oh! Not to mention you're not too picky about what you find in their pants either."

Bakura's face went dead still and flat. For a long, cold moment, manager and pianist stared each other down. Then, with a dismissive snort and spit of blood onto the hardwood floors, Bakura turned into the bathroom and slammed the door behind him.

Leaving Atem and Joey alone with a still dangerous lady manager. Joey shifted, but Atem just slumped against the wall to give himself a moment to register his new bruises—and cuts.

"What a freak…" he muttered.

"Yeah," said Mai with thinly veiled disgust. "And I still can't understand how you two became friends—enough with the puppy eyes, Joseph."

"But I didn't do nothing! If anything, I pulled the two apart!"

"Then get your crap together and decent in five minutes." As Joey groaned and knocked his way back into his room, where Tea was still most likely hiding, Mai minced to Atem and lifted his face up with a pragmatic hand. "At least he didn't scratch your face. Might get a nice shiner, though." Then she slapped him—not too hard, but still enough to sting.

"Ow!"

"That's for giving me trouble." She dropped his face and stepped back to examine the rest of him, making Atem feel like a piece of furniture she was considering buying, and only because it was cheap. "I hope none of those need stitches, because we seriously don't have time to call a doctor right now."

"Oh, jee, wouldn't that be a bother," he muttered.

"Don't be a smart ass. Wait for me in the kitchen, I'm going to go get some first aid from Juan."

Even after she stomped away, Atem didn't so much as twitch from his wall position. The back of his head had started pounding in time with his heart, showing where he yet had another bruise. A thin, drip of blood had made it from his wrists to the bottom of his finger, where it hung as a half-formed bump.

Joey's door opened and Tea slid back out. She had dressed out of her party clothes of the night before and wore a simple jeans and a tee. He did his very best not to look at her as she walked over, demanding to know why he didn't, well, run for it, or at least not wait there all slumped and bleeding against the wall like a pathetic loser.

"Atem?"

She touched his shoulder, feather-light.

"What?" It came out as a snap before he could make it otherwise.

Her hand vanished. "Thanks."

Not trusting his moody self to not butcher anything else, he settled for a "Hnngh," and finally pushed his lazy arse off from the wall. He found a stool around the counter to wait for 'mama Mai' to come back with all her band-aids. If she hadn't looked so deadly, he would have said good riddance and left all the various scratches as they were. They stung like hell, but half had already started to dry.

Tea came around, the paper bags Mai had dropped in her hands and set them out on the counter, where she proceeded to pull out their boxed, Styrofoam breakfast. Seemed no matter the country the visited, some shop or another had Styrofoam take out.

"This one's yours," Tea slid over the one with his name on the front. He took it with a muttered thanks. He expected her to grab hers and run away with it, but instead she set it next to his along with a wet rag, which she offered to him. He accepted it and wiped away what blood there was as he stabbed and chewed some sort of eggplant beef casserole thing. He hated eggplant.

Besides the whistle of Bakura's shower water through the pipes and Joey's occasional banging in the back, Atem and Tea ate in a not uncomfortable silence.

 **"Wendy" synopsis:**

 _Wendy knows she tends to be a mother hen to her friends. But if she doesn't, who will? Her boys are lost from their parents in more ways then one, especially the mysterious Kolya, who awkwardly befriended them after fleeing the Russian mafia. She almost wishes he hadn't when she finds herself on the end of what must be a one-sided love. After all, why would the cool, handsome, aloof Kolya have any interest in a nagging she-man like her?_

 _But when Kolya's past catches up with them, getting rid of an unwanted crush will be the last thing on Wendy's mind._

 **You get a book and I get milk. You don't get me milk, and you still get an extra chapter of your favorite story.**


	18. Don't Listen Too Close

Tea's usual bubbly excitement was replaced by a pale, restrained stillness that reminded Atem of the first day or so that he had met her. It was almost as though her peppiness had been a sign of her getting comfortable with them, and now, since all said trust was ruined, she had gone back to her previous taciturn quiet. She even seemed to make a bit of an effort to keep a good distance between them, even Mai, which confused Atem. The only thing Mai could have been guilty of was trying to push Tea into whatever cute outfit she could find, regardless of her 'modesty lines.'

They rode a train to Saint Petersberg, Russia, with little time to spare for rehearsals before they were once more dressed up and pushed onstage. Otaga and the crew were not pleased at all with Atem and Bakura's battle scars, but they tried to sound to the contrary. They manage to cover the more obvious scratches with extra leather bands, which made Joey laugh and call Atem a bondage slave. They didn't even have the time to have a proper meal, leaving them to catch bites of whatever they could find. He even caught Tea munching on some breaded calzone of sorts back stage right before they were on.

If he had needed a drink ever, it was after that concert. But since Mai had waited in the back of the limo just to make sure her inmates didn't so much as hint to the driver to go anywhere else other than the hotel, he had to make do with the beer he could find in the cooler. Beer hardly did anything for him.

"Can't you at least let me go?" Joey whined for the uptenth time, followed with something about Russian babes.

Bakura, who had been in a rather blank mood, which was far scarier than anything straight out mean as you didn't know what to expect, said, "For god's sake, let him out. Man's desperate to spread his seed."

Mai shuddered, Joey protested, but it did get her to kick out the whiner in front of a night club. One of the Mexican bodyguard cousins peeled off to follow him, and they were once more off. Without Joey, the limo fell into a deathly silence only broken by Atem's swigging of the beer.

Somehow, he managed to get a tiny bit buzzed by the time they reached the hotel, but it wasn't enough to lighten his mood, especially since he was essentially under house arrest with the psychotic albino. The hotel in question was much nicer and more modern than the Romanian one, but that also meant it was smaller, with only two separate rooms and a daybed.

"Really, two of us should get shack up to make booking easier," said Bakura.

Atem didn't even grace that with a retort. He needed to find the room service menu, and see if he could get it in English.

"Card keys," said Mai, manicured claws out.

Bakura groaned. "Seriously?"

Tea demurely gave Mai her card, although Mai hadn't expected her to. Atem gave up his without argument, having found the laminated house services menu.

Bakura, however, crossed his arms and glared. Mai just glared back, like any other unimpressed mother would to a toddler throwing a tantrum.

"Come on, bisexual rapist," she said.

"I am not a rapist!" But he slapped the card into her hand anyways, and with enough force to jar her arm.

Mai just tucked the cards into her pants and adjusted her purse.

"I'm off then, twerps."

Bakura's teeth clacked. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Just because you lot can't have fun, doesn't mean I can't, but I'll be back to check on you within the hour." She leveled a cool, purple look at the two boys. "And don't try to sneak out. I have strict orders to the hotel and security that no one is to go in or out of this room."

And before any of them could protest (or rather, Bakura), she shut the door behind her and clicked away.

Atem fell down onto the sofa, which wasn't as comfy as it was nice to look at. "Looks like you won't be getting any booty calls in, bisexual rapist."

Tea's shriek was the only thing that alerted him to the mug in the air, and he ducked just in time to feel it graze across his hair. Fortunately, it hit the armchair and landed intact with a muffled 'thwump.'

"You of all people should know better than to call me that," Bakura hissed, all blank stillness gone and old fashion Bakura vile back and dripping.

As Atem clapped the menu close and stood, Tea side stepped towards one of the bedrooms, her knuckles curled against her bottom lip.

But if she was expecting a fight, she didn't get it. Because Atem was tired. Very tired.

"You're right," he said. "I'm sorry."

Bakura twitched and wilted, uncertain what to do with that. He seemed to accept it either because he knew Atem well enough to know he meant it, or because he was tired too. Grunting like a horse shaking off a fly, Bakura stomped towards the bedrooms past a fluttering Tea and slammed the door closed behind him.

The poor girl looked to the door, then back at Atem, who had gone to the phone on the wall, as the menu requested. He dialed in the numbers lazily, propping the menu up against the jack to remind himself what he wanted.

"Yeah, hey," he said when a Russian voice started speaking on the other line. "Can I get someone with English?"

"This is house services, what can I do for you, sir?" said the same voice in a mechanic, heavily accented English that sounded rehearsed.

"Can I get the number six red wine? Don't ask me to say the name, I'll just butcher it. And some of that fried tilapia," he moved the mouth piece down and glanced over his shoulder at Tea. "You want anything?"

"What do you have?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I got the menu over here. Kaiba's paying."

She only hesitated for a moment before crossing the room to his side. He barely caught the man's repetition of his order as a vanilla like scent wafted over from her.

"Could you repeat that?" he said, if for nothing else than so she had enough time.

The man didn't quite sigh, but the terse way which he repeated back the red wine and tilapia was all the same.

"Will that be all?"

"I'd like this raspberry soda stuff," said Tea, pointing at the menu though the man couldn't see. "And maybe some, I dunno, pastry or something? What do they have here in Russia?"

"We'd also like some of that raspberry soda and whatever sweet bakery good you happen to have on hand. We've never been here before, so we're not sure what you have."

"We have some very good danishes that should be to a westerner's pallet, apple or cherry?"

"Apple or cherry, Tea?"

"Apple?"

"Alright, apple."

The man repeated back the order, got their room number, and hung up with an almost relieved sounding 'thank you.' Even after Atem put down the phone, he found himself reluctant to move. Tea was still reading over the menu.

"If you're not planning on going to bed," she said some thirty seconds later, "Do you feel up to playing for me? Oh, wait, that would keep Bakura up wouldn't it?"

"Let it keep him up," he turned his back against the counter and cracked his fingers. "Good thing I didn't order that pizza. I hate getting grease on my fingerboard."

"You sure about this? I mean, he's had quite the day—"

"He made his day awful." He glanced aside at her so she saw his dry look. "Stop defending him, he's the one that drugged your drink and scared you so bad."

"Yeah, but," she looked down sheepishly, and it gave him a wonderful view of those long lashes fanning across her little dust of freckles. "You kept me safe, so no harm done, right?"

His neck heated. "Talked to Mai, then?"

"Actually, I looked up some things on Joey's laptop—on the internet, I mean."

He chuckled and pushed himself off and towards his room. "Bet he'll freak on checking his history."

"I used an off window thing. Incognito, I mean. Yeah…um, thank you!" she called after his back.

"No thanks needed," he eased down his case, unlatched the golden cello, and lifted it out. He picked the smoother of the three bows hanging on the underside of the lid and let it fall shut. He couldn't help but smile as he made his way towards the armchair and Tea darted forward to remove the mug Bakura had thrown. He thanked her and set to adjusting the stand to the right height.

"What do you want me to play?" he asked.

Tea curled up in the corner of the sofa and pulled her legs under her. "Oh, anything. Just freestyle it."

"I'm gonna need a suggestion to start out with. Something to help warm me up."

"Oh, well, how about your solo on _Desert Sands?_ I mean, the whole of it, not just the solo part."

Meaning without Bakura's keyboard breaking in after his brief, three measure solo. Even as he replayed the notes in his head, the warmth crowded against his Adam's apple. _She had heard him…_

And still heard him, as his first few notes wrapped her attention about his strings. The heat crawled higher and dropped to his belly at the same time as he followed her eyes to his fingers jumping and rocking with vibrato. He couldn't chase the thought that he was being checked out on a deeper level; like his moving fingers worked on her as good as any suave words or dance.

When a loud knock came to the door, Tea all but fell out of the couch.

"I'll get it! I'll get it!" she squawked.

He let his bow stopped and chuckled. "No need to rush."

But she was already there, accepting a little silver cart from a rather grouchy little man just as dark as her Romanian coffee friend.

"Bill will go to front," he said gruffly.

"Thank you!"

He gave a strained smile, bowed, and stayed till Tea had closed the door. Atem's chuckle was renewed as she started pushing over the trolly like a little girl with a tea set.

"What?" she asked, stopping in her tracks.

"You just look so happy to be pushing around food."

"You're playing for me! Of course I'm happy, it's like my own personal concert."

The heat splurged into his face. "You've played concerts with me. Besides, you didn't even know of me before all this."

"True, but I've heard of you now." She picked up a little china plate with the Danish and her glass bottle of soda, plopped down on the couch, and froze. "Wait, did you want me to get anything for you?"

He shook his head, suddenly realizing something he should have thought of before, even as he remembered her uneasy glances back at the club at his bourbon. "I think I'll wait on the wine. You're not exactly comfortable around drinking, right?"

She ducked her chin down and looked away. "Not really."

"Probably especially around the kind of drunk I am," he added for her, trying to sound kind and casual. "It's okay, you're not keeping me from anything. Do you want me to keep playing?"

"Oh yes, please."

He flushed once more and tried to beat it back with a lighthearted, "Such a fan."

"Course!" She beamed. "Especially for someone nice enough to play for me. Now play, music slave. Your niceness is your downfall."

"From star to slave," but he put his bow back down, finding it hard to keep the witty banter going. His thoughts were getting flustered. Did she mean anything by that? Could he take this as flirting? Or was this just more of her being nice?

As he pushed into the first uncertain notes, feeling around in the darkness for the song without a score, he heard her say, almost as a side note, "You kept your promise to me, Atem. There's no need for you to worry anymore."

His bow bounced back to C string, rumbling against his jumping belly. She had noticed…just as she had been the first to notice the minaret in his playing.

In a sudden jump of daring, he dug into that heady heat she incited in him for inspiration. The C string thrummed against him, moving like a breath up his chest and up the strings to something…tentative. Tentative and sweet on the sharp notes. As he drew out a trilling E, he glanced up to find that Tea had closed her eyes, mouth relaxed. He found himself tracing her lips, already dyed a little from her raspberry soda. The notes grew softer, higher, unbearably hopeful.

Then he realized he wasn't breathing and stopped to suck in a breath. Without meaning to, he had become as breathless as though he had run up a flight of stairs.

"I-I think my tilapia's probably getting cold," he winced at how quick the words came and forced himself to slow down. "Want to try some?"

She opened her eyes and gave him a sleepy sort of smile. "No thanks, I don't really like fish."

"I'll remember that." And he would, just as he found himself stupidly wanting to remember everything about her. He shook out his sweaty hands even as he eased aside his cello and went to the cart for his fish. As his hand brushed up against the wine bottle, he felt the echo of thirst scratching on the back of his throat, but ignored it. The last thing he wanted was to make her uncomfortable—or force himself drooling all over her.

As he sat down, she asked. "Is seafood your favorite, then?"

"Most of the time. Hate oysters, though." He took a bite of the tilapia and swallowed. It wasn't amazing, but it wasn't that bad. It would do. "What kinds of foods do you like?"

"Fruity things, actually," she raised the Danish, which had been nibbled on. "Not as sweet as this, but a nice pie would do. I once had this salad that had bits of green apple mixed in with the lettuce. It was so good, but it was almost hidden in there."

As he ate, they talked a bit more about food, where he found it wasn't so much that she hated all seafood, but just hadn't had that many opportunities to try any good seafood, having grown up poor.

"You've seriously never tried lobster or crab before? Well, we've got to fix that when we get home."

She gave him a crooked smile which turned thoughtful. "Where is your home?"

"You mean you don't know? After all this time?"

She flushed. "Well, Mai kept saying something about Los Angeles, but I don't know where around there and if you guys share a place or have separate apartments or what."

"Actually, we share an apartment building that Kaiba Corp owns." He wiped off his hands on his designer shirt and pulled up his cello. "We get to live there for free, and it's pretty freaking nice, I think you'll like it."

Her eyes went wide. "For free?"

"Yep. Though we can live in our own places, if we want. Bakura and Joey keep calling it a compound, so I think we might look into it when we get back." He hesitated. "You want to come with?"

She grimaced. "Living with three single men doesn't sound like a good idea. I've actually been wondering why Mai doesn't stay with us more often. She just kind of leaves us to our own devices. Doesn't that worry anyone?"

Atem shrugged, plucking a few strings to keep himself from fidgeting. "We're adults. She doesn't have to babysit us. And it isn't like any of us are going to hurt you," he made a face. "I know that's kind of hard to believe with how Bakura's been acting."

"No, I can believe it."

That surprised him. "You can?"

She took a sip of her soda and shrugged. "He's friends with you, isn't he? And I figured he's only hostile towards me because he has some bad experience with Christianity, not because of me personally. I bet he's pretty all right once you take out the God factor from the room."

Atem tried not to cringe. "For the most part, I guess."

Her eyes widened. "You mean he's mean like that all the time?"

"Oh, no, I don't think mean is the right word. More like," he stopped plucking to scratch his chin. "Mischievous?"

She laughed, sending little prickles up his arms. "You make him sound like a pranking house elf or something.

"More like a really bipolar grouchy person who occasionally falls into fits of both thoughtfulness and hysterical good humor. Now that I think about it," he made a show of frowning thoughtfully. "Maybe he is bipolar. Not like his parents would have cared to get him checked."

That gave her pause, and he saw the question in her eyes as she took another swig from the soda and left her lips around the lip of the bottle.

"Let's just say they weren't really open to anything different, especially in regards to mental illness." He shrugged. "Though I wouldn't know. I've never seen them have to deal with anxiety or depression or anything like that, though I'm sure Bakura has those in plenty. But they're kind of the reason I think he doesn't like religion too much. They were pretty hard core Catholics. I think he kept up posters of demonic symbols and naked women just to bother them. Not really original, I know, but there you go."

He settled into bowing a few more notes, quietly and interspaced enough that she could jump back in if she wanted to. As he did so, he watched her out of the corner of his eye. She tried a bit more of her danish before giving up on it and finishing the last of her soda.

They talked more about foods and drinks in general, and a little about his not very concrete belief in anything, before she put her empty bottle down and bid him a good night.

He struggled to come up with something to keep her out there with him and his cello even after she had closed her bedroom door. Since he was sharing a room with Bakura and wasn't all that keen on facing that, he finished the last of his tilapia and settled in for a cup of wine…and then another…and another…

Until sharing a room with Bakura wasn't a problem anymore, as he had passed out on the sofa.

 **I'm really sorry for missing an update! I sort of...well, my husband's job sent us out to Colorado, and on the way there both our cars more or less blew up and we got stranded in Utah, and since his job was only paying him 13/hr anyways which wasn't enough-as you know from my whole 'Publishing Wendy so I can buy food' thing last week, my husband quit his job and we are not living in my grandma's basement. :D Yay?**

 **Oh, but he has a new job, one that pays him 16/hr instead, so maybe we'll actually be able to make it on our own now and I won't have to beg my fanfic readers to buy $2 books?**

 **Btw, if you have gotten Wendy, pretty, pretty please leave a review. ^.^PLEEEEEEASE.**

 **...*sigh* freaking Honda Civic...**


	19. Catching Breaks Is For Suckers

***sniff* God punched out my cars and I got a cold. Fun times. Though at least I'm not puking!...knock on wood.**

 **Meantime, here is a story!**

19

"If I play my cello all twinkly and pining, will you give me a stiff one too?"

Any forgiveness for Bakura that could have been achieved through a night of sleep became impossible after that. Atem gave him a bleary eyed, headache thumping glare to end all glares and slammed the bathroom door in his ugly fanged face, and he didn't come out until he was sure all the hot water was gone and there was gel drench strands of hair all over the toilet handle. Stupid freak hated other people's hair.

Course, luck would have it that when he opened the door, it was Tea who waited for him, not Bakura.

"You don't want to go in there," he told her before slapping a hand over his face. _Way to go making it sound like you dropped a total stink bomb from your ass_. "I mean, I sort of—not like…give me a moment."

"You okay?" she asked.

He closed the door and quickly wiped off the hairball from the toilet handle, just to go back and find that Bakura the dickhead had replaced Tea.

"She's using Mai's bathroom." A wicked smirk spread across his cheeks. "Were you waiting for something?"

Atem just stared at him before swinging the door open and marching away. He could get a hint. The universe would not allow him to have nice things today.

Today was the last day of their world tour. Usually world tours went on for longer, or in more places, but as Kaiba so frequently pointed out, they hadn't reached actual more-than-Europe-and-North-America level quite yet. The fact seemed to wheedle itself into Atem's brain as they stepped into the international airport of St. Petersburg. He kept a good distance between Bakura and him, even going so far as to purposely walk with Tea and Joey between them as they went through security and plopped themselves into seats at the terminal. Due to Mai's exuberance, they had gotten there a whole hour early.

"Keep a look out for crying babies," said Bakura in a mocking rendition of a busy, motherly grandma.

Atem just stopped himself from throwing his shoe at him. The chanting of 'I'm an adult' only helped bolster his restraint by a little, especially when he noticed the darker color backing Tea's dust of freckles.

"Why we looking for crying babies now?" grumbled Joey, who still cradled a coffee. Despite having to split apart a cat fight first thing in the morning, he had yet to pull himself out of the refuse of a night of partying worth three people instead of just one.

"So Tea can mother them, of course," said Bakura.

Tea bowed her head, hiding her face behind a curtain of dark hair.

Joey frowned and glanced at Tea, before shrugging and going back to his coffee.

 _Please let that be it_ , Atem thought desperately. _Please let him shut up._ Though they didn't have any pressing performances anymore, so there wasn't much reason to hold back. It would satisfy so many degrees to punch Bakura. So many levels.

Satisfaction would have to wait, though, as Bakura got himself lost in a book with a dark cover and the title of "Obituary." Most likely it was a horror bordering on being burnt by a foundation for appalling-stories-that-should-have-never-crossed-the-human-mind. Atem would know. He had taken a peek through a fair number of them.

He tried passing his phone to Tea to talk to her without Bakura over hearing, but her answers were short, and he got the impression she'd rather be left alone. He bit his lip and did so, up until they were seated next to each other on the other side of the plane aisle from Bakura and an already sleeping Joey. Then he couldn't hold in his concern anymore and leaned in close.

"Are you gonna be okay?"

She nodded, then leaned down to take out her little leather book. She opened it on her lap, pen poised on a blank page, but didn't write.

The stewardess stood up to give the usual safety spiel.

"Don't listen to Bakura," he murmured, watching her pen. "He's just being petty."

"I figured," she said softly.

"Is that all that's bothering you?"

She didn't respond for a moment. As the flight attendant walked down to check their belts, she gave a shrug.

"I got a lot on my mind. And I'll be out of his hair soon enough, right? Own apartment and stuffs."

"Yeah, so just take a mental ax to anything of his that might pop up."

The corner of her mouth twitched. "I like that. Mental ax."

"Or brain bleach, whichever works."

When the plane finally started to rumble down to the take off platform, her pen finally moved, tracing out a curved, hourglass body that could have been any number of string instruments.

"That song you played the other night," she said. "The high, sweet one near the end. Can you remember any of it?"

More than he would have liked. "About half, yeah, why?"

"I think it would make a wonderful song. You help write the songs, don't you?"

He nodded. "Definitely with the lyrics and melodies. I bet you can remember most of it if not all, though. Why don't you write it down?"

That made her drawing pause. It stretched long enough that he started to wonder. Then it took up again.

"Um, yeah...if I played it, could you write it down?"

"I guess." When they had given her sheet music, she had barely glanced at it for reference. He had attributed that to her excellent memory, but… "You can read music, right?"

Her pen tentively started to draw in pegs and strings. Her voice was tiny. "It's not a problem if I can't, right? I mean, I can read enough."

"What qualifies as 'enough'?"

"Knowing when to go up or down or…stuff."

He stared at her. The ear poking out of her hair turned pink and she tried to hide behind her sweeping chin length hair once more.

He finally moved himself to ask, "How is that possible?"

"Oh, well, I could play so well after hearing the song, I just never—I mean, no one ever noticed unless they put music in front of me I never heard, and I wouldn't have to do that in a performance, right?"

"But you had teachers that taught you, right?"

"Occasionally, I guess…whenever the schools music teacher noticed, I suppose. I went to more than one school."

An image of Tea sitting in the back of a high school band or orchestra popped into his head, keeping her head down and listening to the cellos beside her as she played violin.

"Did anyone ever notice how many instruments you could play?" he asked.

"Only when I borrowed them from my friends," she said, her voice strengthening again. "I mean, my friends knew, I guess, but we never really spoke out—I mean, I was asked occasionally to play or do a solo or…yeah."

He could only stare at her. To think that that much talent had been hidden in plain sight, in the cheap public school system.

"It won't be a problem, right?" she pressed.

"Well, it hasn't been a problem yet. I don't think anyone's really—I mean, I haven't noticed. Wow." He blinked hard, a smile growing on his face. "You're amazing. Do you really plan on doing nothing with your talent?"

"I'm doing something right now, aren't I?" Her ear had cooled somewhat and she had lifted her chin so he could see her face again, even if she only glanced at him before going back to her drawing.

"I mean after this. You said something about a trade school. Though seriously, you should stick with us. You even have an ear for music, picking out some messing around I did last night, and remembering it. Think of the stuff you could just pick up for us and piece together."

"I don't think Bakura would like that too much."

Atem snorted, loud enough that a few people across the aisle, including Bakura, sent him a look.

"Give Bakura some time, he'll get over it. Trust me."

Her pen paused mid shading of the side of maybe a violin's body. The drawing wasn't half bad. The F holes were uneven, though, and looked more like S's. The stewardess came by and took their orders for drinks, though Tea didn't go back to her drawing.

Atem was just starting to scratch his brain for more conversation fodder when a face peered at him from between the seats in front of them.

"Um, pardon, but…are you really Atem Tenno from _Millennial Sands_?"

He couldn't place her accent, and rather than lying, he just gave an apologetic smile.

Apparently, that was enough.

"Oh my gawd, I was at your concert—what are you doing on a commercial airline? On _my_ plane—oh my gawd, Tiffy—" a foreign language poured out, something latin based, Atem assumed. By the time he got the shirt signed and lifted over the seats, which he then had to endure the girl touching his hand for way too long and unnecessarily, an excited murmur had started out over the plane. The moment the seatbelt light flicked off, a couple a kids, sixteen at most, came up from the back to verify what they had heard. Unfortunately, they spoke very poor English, though after seeing the lineup of a sleeping Joey and a Bakura trying very hard to ignore them, they started stuffing smartphones and paper into his hands. Tea graciously yielded up to him her pen for the paper, though with the phones…

"I'm sorry, I can't give you my number," Atem said, trying to catch Bakura's eye. Help from anywhere would be nice, because the teenagers looked closer to foaming than giving up, and more had come.

And from the heaven's came Tea's hand once more to pick up the kid's cell phone. A couple of taps later, and a picture of Atem's message scribbled out on said on a piece of paper, and handed it back. Even as the phone passed across Atem to the kid, he saw the words unscramble themselves on the screen from English to something else. The kid got very excited when he read it.

"I forgot about that," said Atem.

A stewardess came by to urge the kids to sit down. Those who had their autographs scuttled off, but the majority of them stayed, jabbering in Slavic or broken English and passing their phones to Atem and Tea. Surprisingly, when Atem threw his hands up in the air, trying to pronounce whatever his message translated into, Tea scribbled something else on one of their papers and handed it to them, not even bothering to take a picture. Instantly, a kid thanked her and headed on his merry way.

"What did you give him?" Atem asked, even as the chattering hands made pleading motions towards Tea and the boy.

"Your new address," she said smugly, handing over another piece of paper, which Atem managed to read before a sweaty hand snapped it up.

 **DarkAtemu**

"What I'm wondering is why this hasn't happened on our other plane trips," she said, dispensing the small crowd one scribble at a time to a very flustered pair of flight attendants.

"I don't know, I guess we're more popular in Russia, or…whatever they were speaking."

"Romanian," she said. "At least, that's what the one kid's phone said."

"You mean this hasn't happened to you before?" said the squealy fangirl in front of them. "Oh my gawd, that's, like, insane! But totally great, I just want to hear everything—wait, do you have a girlfriend? Oh my gawd, aren't you that new girl? Are you his girlfriend?"

Needless to say, it was a very, very long flight.


	20. Easy to Pretend

The next week flew by in a blur of recovery from jetlag, interviews with various talkshow hosts about their new member (who took all the publicity very well, if you weren't looking close and if you took out the fact she said nothing), and lavishing in the smell of his own bedsheets. Bleach or whatever they clean hotel sheets with had gotten old, and Atem was beginning to suspect he had a thing with smells. The lot of them were so busy, what with Tea moving in to her own little one room on their same hall and Atem dodging questions about the truth of Rebecca's resignation, that they didn't have the time to really talk to one another.

Course, Mai started pushing the grill almost the moment they were back on land.

"Keep your ears open to the muse, boys. Your next single is due in a month, but I want three songs prepped for the next album by then."

Joey had said something about slavery, and Bakura about money making machines, but Atem had just flopped into his apartment and gone to sleep.

Saturday, around noon, he morosely ate a bowl of Mini-Wheats in the twilight gloom of his apartment. The ceiling to floor windows hadn't opened since Tuesday, when he had hoped the sunlight might help fix his messed up biological clock. Nothing had helped that but a bottle of something alcoholic, though. Hurray depressant drugs.

He smacked his spoon out of his mouth and jabbed it at the smiling athlete on the cereal box. "Mini-Wheats make you regular, not muscles. Are you regular, Mr. Tom-whoever?"

The doorbell rang. He just stopped himself from smacking his forehead into his wheatiess and checked his smartphone. No messages. Well, no messages besides something strange and rancid from Joey he had yet to answer. That meant no Mai.

He debated on not answering at all, still being in his lovely comfy sleeping sweats, but then remembered that Tea had yet to get a phone. It was remarkable how Kaiba was neglecting her, but it would explain why she felt the need to visit rather than announce her visit with a call.

So he swaggered from his stool, spoon in his mouth, and crossed the span of polished wood floor to the door.

Sure enough, a pretty, much cleaner than him Tea stood with her hands folded behind a poofy, ruffled white skirt. The blue of her eyes arrested him immediately, and he blamed the blue of her shirt. Honestly, he had never took more notice of what a girl wore until she had come along.

"Hey, um, Atem, You got some free time?"

That depended entirely on who was asking. His spoon made a loud popping noise as he pulled it out. "Oh, yeah. You need something?"

"I was wondering if we could work on that song, you know, the one you played that night in Russia."

Out of context, that sounded way more romantic than it actually was. Maybe he could forget about the circumstances, just for the moment…and…yeaaaaaah.

"Course. Come in while I change into some pants. Help yourself to anything in the cupboards if you're hungry."

"No, that's okay. Mai gave me some money and I finished shopping the other day." Her words drifted as she stepped into the gloom and closed the door behind her, squinting.

"Oh, sorry, I can open a curtain if you want."

"Nah, I actually like it this way. Feels like a cave, and," she let out a heavy sigh that sagged all her tension out of her at once, along with a quirky little smile that hit him too low. "After this week, I could live in a black box for the rest of my life. Please, keep the curtains closed."

That made him smile. His thoughts exactly. Whoever built huge windows into a celebrity complex hadn't thought that through.

"Would you mind if—do you have a piano or keyboard?" she asked, following him across the main room, which had the kitchen on one side and the living/dining space sprawled out before the windows on the other.

"Yeah. Last room on the right."

He thought he heard her murmur, "So much space," before closing his bedroom door behind him.

It wasn't till he was sure the door was secure and locked that he allowed himself a silent, happy little dance, followed up by a stern self-scolding (still silent), and an all but whispered "I don't care." Tea was in his apartment. Tea and him were going to be alone, in his apartment. No snide Bakura, no nosey Joey, no bossy Mai—and making sweet, sweet music, which somehow sounded exactly the same as making love in his head. At least, it must have for how he was still chortling madly as he pulled on the first clean pair of jeans he found and a Star Trek shirt Mai had gotten him in an attempt to get him to shut up about the one she had thrown away.

But then he stopped dead at the door, a new conundrum appearing.

 _Should he brush his teeth?_ No, he should definitely brush his teeth, just in case they got close—but the bathroom was across the hall. If she heard him brushing his teeth, wouldn't she get ideas and get all weird? No, that was stupid, everyone brushed their teeth in the morning—but it wasn't morning, it was almost one! And what about the wheaties? Should he just leave them there—ugh, he hated dishes—no, he had to brush his teeth. Puffing foul breath on her face was way worse than her maybe thinking he had kissing on the mind—hell, why would she think he was thinking about kissing? Pfft, he wasn't thinking about kissing, no way!

He didn't realize how hot his face had gotten until he opened the door and a puff of cooler air drafted against it.

Just to be blindsided by Tea standing in the middle of the room across the hall, still as though electrocuted. He frowned. The time he had spent in there had seemed longer than that. Shouldn't she have found the piano yet?

"Tea?"

She turned at her name, revealing a broad, toothy smile and sparkling eyes.

"So many!" she squeaked, fisted hands squeezed up to her chest in a very attractive manner. He doubted she knew how well she was framing her breasts then. "Please, can I? Can I?"

He'd forgotten about the glow she seemed to emit. When had it stopped? But he could see where it came from now: in her expression, in her smile, in the brightness of her eyes. Happiness radiated off of her. He was hard pressed to remember when he'd seen such deep seated joy.

He flopped an arm weakly towards the walls of instruments. "Be my guest."

Another squeal, a pop of heels into the air, and she had set upon a rosewood guitar, only to take it with her to the piano. The tinkling raucous that ensued made his tooth brushing dilemma wasted.

By the time he had scrubbed and mint-apocalyized his mouth and settled on a bean bag with a stack of blank music sheets, Tea had moved through the guitar, piano, cello, viola, and was just setting down the violin to go towards an Irish flute in a glass display case that he had gotten as a gift and forgotten about.

"It's okay?" she asked, fingers trembling before the glass.

"Go for it. I've probably only blown on it twice."

And it was gone to shut off a gleeful mouth mid-squeal. Just as he was trying to remember what the thing sounded like, she gave a few, experimental toots. Nothing extraordinary happened, and since he could get a good vantage point of her freckled legs from his lower position, he was content to watch.

The next thing he knew, a merry, happy jig filled the room, clean and trilling as any professional recording. Her heels even started popping again, bouncing her in place.

"Whoa, do you have one of those at home?" he asked.

She stopped mid-toot breathlessly. "Nah, I've never seen one like this before. What's it called?"

At some point, he thought, he should get use to this…right?

"That's…" When he had played it, he had sounded like a kindergarten kid with a recorder.

A bit of her fervent excitement toned down and she sobered a bit. Carefully wiping the mouth of the flute, she put it back in its case and carefully closed the glass door.

"Will you play it for me sometime?" she asked.

He let out a puff of disbelief. "I keep that for decoration. I don't play it."

She snapped him a wide-eyed look that turned back to the flute with longing. "Pity. It has such a pretty tone."

"Speaking of tone," he leaned forward on his knees and flapped the pages up and down.

"Oh, yeah, right," she scuttled to the piano, where she settled her fingers on the keys with a poof of lacy skirt. "You've written down what you remember, right? Because I might have gotten it wrong."

No. He'd been too busy talking pooping schedules with Sir Wheaties. "I don't have much, so let's start with what you've got."

He had her play it once through, not because he was blown away again at her memory—he had some ability to grow tolerance to that particular amazement…yeah. And it wasn't because she used the pedal pad in time with her keys to drag out the tenderness of the notes. But rather it was like listening to a stranger. Only a short triage of repeating notes reminded him that he had written this song, not her. It still had his same style, the same Arabic-like trill and slide to the highest notes. But the aching…she played it so convincingly, for a moment, he dared to think that maybe she felt it too.

Then she turned on it, chopping it up for him with all the cold precision of felaying a fish.

"And this should be the next notes—you got the last three? And the count of the last note?"

"Yeah, yeah," and he'd have to hum it out to her three times before she was convinced.

"You can write that trill into the music?"

"You at least know that, don't you?"

"And that accidental? The slide?"

"I got it, I got it, just play, I'll tell you when to stop."

"No, I want to make sure you get the _feeling_ down."

Oh, good lord, that had worked the blood to his neck. If only she knew.

It was tedious work, recording each of the notes as she played it. For someone who hadn't composed the song, she was remarkably stickler about it. By the time they finished he was hungry bordering on nausea. The way she slumped off the bench and onto the floor into a spread-eagle starfish told him she felt much the same.

"My back," she moaned.

His stupid mouth opened to tell her he could fix that for her, but his smarter brain said, "Want to grab something eat?"

"That would be spectacular, as long as it's not some ritzy five star place."

He had to chuckle at that. "What, you think that's all celebrities eat? Nah, I was thinking Red Lobster. You said you'd never tried shrimp or crab before."

She flopped her head over to give him a beady look. "Red Lobster isn't much different."

"It's way different! It's on the same level as Applebees."

She gave him an amused, lopsided smile. "I only went there for my birthday, if that."

"Fine, poor stuff, I'm paying for the dinner so I say where we get to go, and I say Red Lobster."

"Won't people jump us? Famous and all?"

He shrugged. "Put a hat on, don't draw attention to yourself, you'll be fine. There are a lot of people in the world. Besides, the Red Lobster around here is use to hot shots. If they want to stay in business, they'll not draw attention to that fact."

Suddenly, a yodel of sorts echoed down from the mainroom of his house.

"Ello ello, Pharaoh! Joey's in the house!"

Oh, great. What were the chances of getting past Joey without him finding out they were going out to eat, and therefore, tagging along? None to anorexic. "Ever heard of knocking?"

"Nope. Gotta catch you in all your private business," and he walked into view at that point, catching sight of just what happened to be Atem's current private business. He put his fingertips delicately to his cheeks with a round, girlish 'O' of his mouth. "Gasp. Alone. Sex?"

It wasn't even funny how tasteless that comment was. "What do you want?"

"To hang out with my buddy and smoke a joint, is that a crime?"

"In many states, yes."

"Well, jee, no need to be so grumpy. I didn't think you were actually trying to get it on with her, but now that you're acting like that…"

"We've been working on a song," Tea chirped, with an echo of her earlier energy. "Want to hear?"

No. This couldn't get started. He was starving, and Joey's uninvited arrival had just turned on the hangry. "Actually, we've got somewhere to be—"

"Hold the phone," said Joey, pulling out a white joint and flashy silver lighter even as he spoke. "Let's hear it. Got a singles due date ragging on us and all."

Atem groaned. "Don't smoke that in my house."

"What? It's lemon scented."

"I don't care, it burns, it smells the same to me, just put it away."

"Alright, alright."

Tea had somehow gotten herself off the floor and onto the piano without Atem's notice. "Ready? Atem's the one who actually wrote it, but I remembered it."

"Yeah, shoot." Joey plopped himself on the beanbag next to Atem.

She played, with all the lost tenderness of before. Joey was rightly impressed. Atem was not. Hearing that song being played before Joey suddenly felt like he had just stripped; like Joey was viewing something meant to be intimate. And, in a way, went his logical mind, he was. But to say so would be, ahem, folly.

Surprisingly enough, after hearing the song, Joey didn't ask where they were going. In fact, he left right away, giving Atem conspicuous winks all the way out to the door. By the time he was gone, Atem actually wish Joey was going with them. There was no way Tea had missed any of that obvious implying.

But even if she had, what was with all the awkward feelings? He'd taken girls out to eat before, right? And to much more romantic places than freaking Red Lobster. He'd even managed those dates without blushing once from start to finish, a few times that finish being inbetween the sheets.

Oh crap, now that he was thinking about that, he was thinking about how she was virgin and how he had scrubbed out his mouth and what she might be thinking and that he wasn't planning on seducing her or anything, they were just both hungry and tired and deserved a reward for their hard work—

"Um, Atem? Are we going?"

He shook himself, realizing he'd been standing there staring at the door, not panicking—of course not panicking.

"Yeah. I'm just—you know when you get so hungry your brain shuts off?"

"Definitely," she said with feeling. "You want me to drive?"

"You got a car?"

"No, but I figured you have one."

Yes. Yes he did. But, several floors down to the parking garage, he decided with the fumbling, not-panicking part of him that if he was going to think of this as a somewhat-sorta-date, he might as well go all the way and drive himself. He even opened the door for her, which he congratulated himself on. Didn't have to shove his way in front of her or anything. Yay him.

Course, she stood there staring at it for a bit.

"That's really fancy," she said, a bit faint.

"Not too fancy," he looked over at his sleek, dark violet Volkswagon. "It's not a Porsche or anything." That was Bakura's car.

"But it's your car?"

"Uh, yeah. Not even making payments on it, why?"

She seemed to shake herself much as he had staring at his front door after Joey left. "Oh, nothing much. You guys have just been talking about yourselves like you're not that well off as musicians and Kaiba was giving you pressure and…" she trailed off, looking down at her feet sheepishly. "I'll just get in now."

He refrained from giving her an odd look and closed the door behind her. He supposed it could be fancy. It was only a 2017, and it was one of the more sportsy looking models.

Even so, he couldn't help but feel just a bit base in the manly department as he drove her to lobster. There was just something about taking out a beautiful girl in a car she was impressed by to feed her. Maybe it was the good old killing the mammoth mentality. Providing and flashy feathers in one.


	21. Minarets

**Thank you for your wonderful reviews. They help encourage me to keep going.**

21

Red Lobster was both a blessing and a curse—there had to be a different way of saying that. Turns out she didn't mind shrimp or lobster at all, once she got over how much money they were spending. But that was besides the point.

Because it was her mouth he found himself entrance with. Not like a creep, but rather the words she spoke. She'd say the most profound, wise things with the expression of a child—things he couldn't argue with that made him see the most mundane things in a new light, or take notice that which he took for granted. Sometimes it felt like he was hearing words spoken from another time when the world had a better grasp on itself, if it ever had. Or maybe a time when things made just a little more sense. And then, the moment he'd get comfortable with the conversation, she'd turn and make a new observation about himself or those around them with that same intuition that made him wonder just how much she observed him.

Being reaffirmed that she did actually pay attention to him made something inflate and warm inside him, and got him thinking…hoping.

Hoping to the point that by the time they made it back to her door, he was ready for an opening to try and kiss her good night. But the opening never came. She just waved and vanished with a yawn.

His hope deflated ever so slightly. He could begin to hear the doubts again.

They got louder when he tried to go to sleep, wired and head still spinning with her.

 _"I was told that you're honest, so I trusted you. And so far, I can see they're right. Never let go of that, okay? Though, one day, you'll find yourself in a dark place and will have to figure out why you really care so much about being honest, and whether it's worth it to you."_

It almost sounded prophetic. And he could see what she meant. Hard times brought your true self out. Whether he wanted to see his true self was a different story, though.

And through her smiles, her words, her closed expression as she played through the cords of his heart on the piano, he heard the lyrics again from France: _back, back, back to the minaret._ Back to swathes of white, tan and gray, paying a soundless homage to the lone voice on the tower—no. To some invisible, all powerful being in the air, who had little reason to care about their petty wants and sorrows.

 _And if anyone looks round, to stamp out what's left of your sound…_

But it was past one in the morning, and he was too tired and thirsty to pay homage to that particular song.

So he got up, pulled a bottle of red wine from the pantry, and set about cirroising his liver and brain. The thought did occur to him that he was going about this the wrong way…whatever this was that kept him up at night, but by then he was too drowsy to examine it. He wasn't going through a hard time, at least not the hard time Tea hinted towards. Yeah, he had to deal with the guilt of his bad choices and losing Rebecca, but it wasn't like they had been real lovers or that it had been that cataclysmic. After all, they got Tea through all that, right?

But, then…he had yet to see if that was a good or bad thing.

 _Go back to the minaret…_

Like every opening to an especially bad day, he was rudely awoken by blinding light and an equally blinding albino. Why couldn't he dye his hair a different color? At least something that didn't reflect the sun like a freaking mirror. And did anyone knock? Or better yet, not break and enter?

"Heard you got a song," he said, gruffly. "Well?"

Atem swore, pressing his hands hard enough into his eyes to push them out the back of his head. Perhaps it would take the aching pain along with them.

"Damn it, you drank yourself to sleep again? Pharaoh, we got health training with the muscles in an hour and Mai's on a warpath to hear whatever funk you played for Joey last night."

"I don't want to play it," he moaned before he could think better of it.

"Just get your ass out of bed."

Bakura didn't give him much choice. With a well aimed kick and a tug of sheets, Atem was sent sprawling onto the floor, cursing Bakura to a circle of hell devoted to child molesters and people who talked in the theater.

"If you can quote third rate sci-fi movies at me, you can get up. Muush."

"Go away."

"Not until you're in the shower."

He saw the clock. 7:13. Last time he remembered was 2:30. "You're such a prick."

"No, I am THE prick who isn't going to let the, quotation fingers, "Band Leader" drink himself out of his responsibilities and leave his band members to make up for him."

"Fine, I get it, can I have a hand?"

Evil smirk. "No. Though I think I've got an extra kick."

Some worming across the floor, hot water, and a gagged down banana later, he was out in the too hot, too bright summer sun, glooping himself into the back of Mai's car just to find himself doing said glooping into a lap that did not smell like Joey's overdone Axe musk. In fact, it was definitely feminine and smelled of vanilla.

He shot up too quick for his stomach, which had been fighting with the banana anyways, and ended up scrambling back out of the car to throw up on the perfectly manicured lawn of their apartment complex.

And right next to Mai's sparkly, designer heels. Granted, he had purposely been aiming for the grass to avoid the sidewalk so that wouldn't happen, but she had been coming up on his rear and got some of the back splash anyways.

The next ten minutes were bleary, humiliating, painful hell. If it weren't for the overwhelming stench of alcohol, perhaps Mai would have bought the stomach flu excuse. But since she didn't, he was hauled bodily from the car by his ear as though he were some child and her a merciless British nanny.

"Get a hold of yourself! How old are you? How many people have you known who lost their careers because they couldn't control their drinking? Do I need to sign you into rehab? Do you have any idea what rehab would do to your career now? You're at a critical moment where you can either go up or down—and really? After you just finished an international tour? What could possibly be attracting you to drinking yourself to this state? Honestly, grow up and get a hold—stop whining! No, I won't let go of your ear until you act like the grown man you happen to be! Honestly, and right in front of poor Tea."

Since when had Mai prefaced any of their names with 'poor?' Why such motherly concern for Tea when Mai was so utterly, well, unmotherly?

He already knew the answer. It was the same one to why he found himself so caught up in Tea too.

Mai dumped him ungracefully on the floor of his apartment.

"Clean up," she growled. "When I come back, you better be bright eyed and every speck of booze in a box by the door."

Through the sparking pain of his humiliation and tortured ear, he managed to splutter, "You work for us—"

"I work for Kaiba," she spat. "As do you. When you lot are famous enough that you can have your pick of your own producer and manager, you can swipe out that card all you want. Until then, detox, pack ALL your booze by door, I'll be back at ten to pick you up for the interview."

"What interview?"

That got him a glare to boil blood into a crisp. Or freeze it.

She slammed the door behind her. The silence that followed her buzzed as loudly as her words.

Hugging his stomach, hand to his ear, he got to his feet and headed for the bathroom. Best get rid of whatever was left to hurl and start from scratch. Experience told him he'd feel better after that. Though there was no cure for a shattered dignity, which left the overall malaise stick around longer than it would have normally.

After he'd done all he could to make up to his body, he drifted through his kitchen, putting away the mini-wheats, doing what little dishes he had, then caught his own reflection in his chrome fridge, or rather, the blurred basics of his reflection. His usually stylishly wild hair had gone flat. So he sighed, put away the broom he'd been about to use, and went back to the bathroom to take care of it, as well as add on his basic eyeliner and scrub his mouth a second time through.

As he watched the mint bubbles swirl in the marble sink, he could hear the whisper of a tune in the back of his mind. It wasn't unique. It was one of the default ones: the call to prayer he'd heard in Egypt, and refreshed from Youtube when he'd returned to the States.

Nevertheless, he found himself at his goldenwood cello with his notebook besides him on the piano bench. He didn't bother tuning, but jumped into it. The gentle vibrations of the cello's body against his abused stomach felt good. His usual humming along even added to it.

Tea had said something about his playing. Back when she had asked—was it the first time? When had it been…she hadn't been really conscious—ah, yes. That she wanted to hear his prayer.

He paused, his bow lax on the thick C string. He glanced over to his notebook, where he'd scribbled various notes and lyrics.

 _Calling to a pretend heaven, with your face to the ground…_

He scoffed at the words. Did Tea influence him to be more religious? Because that wasn't happening. He didn't get the point to it anyways, other than to help you feel better when someone you love died or other such bad things happened, and even then it was only if you 'believed' hard enough.

The doorbell dinged over the house speakers. He groaned and set his cello down. He'd forgotten to root out all his booze. Monster Mai would not be pleased.

"Coming," he called out, not bothering to sound enthusiastic, as he shuffled his way to the door. He didn't exactly hurry. There was nothing to look forward to, and what kind of person pulls on other ears? Who did that anymore? Did even British nannies do that? Hell, he didn't know.

He braced himself, opened the door—

Tea. Once more in a flouncy knee-length skirt, this one yellow with pink poka dots, but a rather old looking T-shirt. She looked a bit mismatched, in his opinion, but he wasn't about to say anything about that, no way. And no way was he about to comment on the enormous, 50's style yellow bow on her head either.

"Tea?"

She smiled and held out a paper bag. "I convinced Mai to let me corral you. We don't have to leave for another twenty minutes, so I picked up some stuff that I thought might help you feel better."

He blinked owlishly at the bag before taking it from her. "Thank…you?"

At his hesitance, she flushed. "I'm sorry, was that too weird?"

"No! No, not at all! I'm just not use to someone being so thoughtful, wait, that sounds bad. Um, the guys and Mai are thoughtful all the time, just not…" Yeah, he didn't know where he was going with that. "Would you like to come in? You could play with my instruments some more."

Bingo. Her face did that lighting up thing that kept making his insides dance.

"Can I play with the flute again?"

"Yep. I was even playing myself."

She made a happy little noise that elicited his first smile from him and bounced inside, as though nothing at all had happened that morning and they were the best of friends.

The best of friends…

As he mentally took a butcher knife to the part of his brain trying to replay how he had face planted in her lap that morning just to duck out and barf on their manager's shoes, he went to his kitchen island to investigate her gift as she flounced away to the music room. First was a bottle of pink stomach medicine, some Sprite, and…a lamb, pita sandwich?

At the site of only the best food in the whole damn world, his absent appetite poked its head up enough to wet his mouth. How had she known? She'd probably asked Joey, or something. Just to play it safe, he took the stomach medicine first before taking his first bite. Even as he chewed, he wondered where she could have gotten it. A Greek food joint had been the first thing he'd looked for when he moved in here. He hadn't found one.

He brought it and the Sprite with him to the music room, where she had the flute and was trying out notes with a narrowed look of concentration.

"Where'd you find this?" he asked, jerking his chin to the sandwich.

"Oh, I dropped into a grocery deli next to the health trainer's place. Joey told me you liked…what are those sandwiches called? By the way, having a health trainer is the weirdest, coolest thing in the world." Her eyes went big with childish wonder. "He made this most amazing burrito thing that tasted like tuna, but wasn't tuna at all! It had pomegranate in it and nuts—and then we did this really cool yoga and…" she turned sheepish and looked back down at her flute. "Sorry, you're probably use to this."

"Hardly," he took his place on the beanbag again, washing down delicious lamb chop with Sprite. Yes. This so did the trick. If he didn't love her before, ho boy, he sure loved her now. Did that mean he was simple?

He listened to her go on about her adventures with the health trainer and finding decorative knickknacks to make her apartment more like home. Despite her initial excitement, the flute was all but forgotten in her hand. She even let it go onto the music stand of the upright piano to take his cello and pluck at it a bit. She was going to sit down on said piano bench when she noticed the notepad and his scribbled song.

"What's this?" The nails of her left hand picked at the cello's strings as her right picked it up to her face.

"Just some brainstorming, you know. We do have a single due at the end of the month."

"Yeah, I was told…"

As her bright eyes scanned the words, for he knew now she cared little for staffs of notes, he wondered if he should be embarrassed. He was uncomfortable, yes, but it wasn't quite embarrassment. More like…apprehension.

"I love how these words seem to already have a beat to them. And..." she hesitated, glancing at him over the pages. "Why a minaret?"

He shrugged, not entirely knowing himself. But…he swallowed his mouthful. "When I visited Egypt that one time, I sort of got fascinated by the call to prayer they did. It's a Muslim country, so they have these tall minaret's where this guy goes to the top of and does this kind of singing—you know, right?"

"Yeah, I've heard bits of it, you know, on documentary films." She put the notebook down by her side, her nails on the cello strings still. "It must have been something to hear the whole thing in person. Did everyone really stop what they were doing and kneel towards mecca?"

"In most places, I suppose. Of course it wasn't everywhere, but it was kind of alarming the first time, because I was outside and everyone just suddenly dropped and I didn't think fast enough."

"And…what, you got attacked by the prayer patrol?"

He let out a short laugh. "No. I just found myself standing there, looking down at everyone, while this crackly speaker blasted out my ear. I liked the music, though." He paused, scratching a piece of lint off his designer jeans. "But I guess that might be just me."

She frowned and opened her mouth to say something, probably to deny it, but then she hesitated, cocking her head to the side as she considered him.

"What?" he asked.

"It's not the music that's bothering you," she said, in that weird clairvoyance of hers. "You know your music doesn't have a problem with conforming to popular taste." She paused, fidgeting and looking down at her shoes. "What are you afraid of?"

He gave a chuckle and a swallow of pop. "That came out of nowhere. Where to begin? I have this weird phobia of a candle tipping over while I'm asleep and setting my house on fire. And cockroaches. Definitely cockroaches. Spiders are fine though, don't know why. Maybe it's because they don't crunch when you step on them."

The way she glanced up at him through her lashes and started plucking at the cello told him she didn't buy it. But, then, what did she expect him to say after being served such a loaded question? Weren't people often afraid of everything? And wouldn't it be redundant to say that he was afraid his music career might plop, that his drinking might be out of control, that he was failing his bandmates to the point they would stop being friends after so many years; that he'd never get a chance with her—or worse—do to her what he did to Rebecca…

He said none of that. Just finished his sandwich to the tug and pull of her cello playing. The Irish flute remained forgotten on the piano.


	22. Gut Deep

22

Atem didn't know why Mai had bothered to make them all come to the radio station. The interview ended up being a 'get to know you' for Tea. All they were asked to do were give a few sentences about how they felt about the whole thing, which Bakura gave with his tongue in his cheek and thinly veiled sarcasm.

"She cool," said Joey. "Really admire her for how she sticks to her standards. That's something."

The interviewer, a radio talk show host named Sheila Shucks (Atem doubted it was her real name), hesitated only a moment over that before turning her full attention to a rather pale Tea. Joey was herded to the other side of the recording room, beyond the glass and sound proof walls, where Atem and Bakura watched on with cold bottles of iced tea behind the techies.

"You should have just said she was one with Jesus," said Bakura, with his usual smirk.

"Dude, you've got to find another topic, this one's getting old," Joey said, snapping open his own iced tea and plopping down on the other side of Atem.

"And it wasn't funny from the start," added Atem, who had the top of his head pressed against the wall so his chin was tilted up to the ceiling. He was so bored. He hated being bored. No rock star should be allowed to be this bored. He'd even played the crap out of the games on his phone and didn't feel like searching through the horde for more.

"Good thing I wasn't aiming to entertain," said Bakura.

Meanwhile, sparky Sheila Shucks had just asked Tea where she was from.

"The shelter," said Bakura.

"Um, kind of from everywhere. I came to New York City from south Maine [J1] where my folks were living, but we've moved around a lot."

"Oo! What do your parents think about your jump from janitor to stardom?"

"Um, actually I was a hotel usher…and my mom…uh…"

There was an awkward pause.

It was a good thing the wall between them was fully soundproof, because Bakura burst into that irritating, hyena like laughter, cut off by Joey elbowing him in the side. One of the techies gave him a weird look over his shoulder.

"I bet she's really excited, of course! There's no need to be so nervous, dear. Everyone just wants to get to know you. Your story is rather fantastic, it's like the new American Idol! A dream come true! And it sounds like you're getting along with the band well."

"Oh, yes. I like them a lot."

Atem cringed. She sounded like a child. At least Bakura only snickered and settled for messing around with his phone. Atem brought his head down to watch in concern where Tea sat wearing headphones before a mic with her hands squeezed between her knees.

Thankfully, Sheila Shucks was a pro. "You gotten especially close to any of them in particular?"

Tea's face flushed. "Uh, um, how so?"

"Just like a friend, or maybe more. I have from very reliable sources that you went out for some good old Red Lobster with Atem. Was it a date?"

The pink turned to an all out red. "No! No, we had just been working on a song all afternoon and lost track of the time and were hungry and…yeah."

"Oh! A song? Just you and him? What's it about?"

Tea's knees had started to hop a bit. "I don't know yet, there's no words. He came up with the tune, I just, you know, remembered it for him."

"Remembered it?"

"Yeah. When I hear something, I remember it. That's how I was able to learn all the songs the night before the concert."

There was a shocked little pause.

"I'm sorry," said the blond, pink lipped hostess. "Didn't they have the sheet music for you?"

The knees were hopping faster. "Um, yeah, but I-I learn faster if I just listen to it. I had their whole album, so that helped, and I really like the cello."

Thankfully, the hostess didn't dig any further, probably because she was noticing how uncomfortable Tea was getting, so she steered the topic into the cello and Tea's particular love for a Romanian cellist. From there, it stayed in the rather shallow waters of her likes and dislikes. Pretty basic.

Her religion and beliefs were, oddly, never brought up.

"Ten bucks says a huge Tea and Atem shipping crowd pops up after this," said Joey.

Bakura snorted. "Please, make it worth my wild. Fifty the one with me and her is bigger."

"I'm not betting with you, Pasty, I learned my lesson. I was talking to Atem."

"Why would I want to bet on my own ship?" asked Atem, who ignored the little squirm in his stomach.

"Because you like it," said Joey with a broad, toothie smirk.

Atem felt his face go hot and quickly made sure that the techies weren't looking at them. That didn't mean they hadn't heard, but he hoped their attention was fully on what was going on in the booth.

This made Joey laugh. "Hell, aren't you cute! You ain't even going to deny it?"

"We're not in High School, Joey. Besides, you think she's cute too, don't you?"

Joey's iced tea switched hands and he wiped the free one on his shirt. "Yeah, but the bow's a little much, and I like my girls way more loose."

Bakura, however, didn't catch on with the good humor. He did, however, give Atem a dry little smirk.

"So, you asked her out on a date?" Bakura gestured towards the sound booth with his shoulder.

"I did not," Atem tried to sound as nonchalant as possible. "It's as she says. She remembered a song I played while I was messing around—"

"A sweet little number," Joey cooed. "Caught them all alone and cutesy in his music room."

Bakura's dark eyes flashed and the smirk got wet. "Oh, so it was the erection song."

Atem slapped his face as Joey squirted tea from his nose and all over the industrial carpet.

"—I'm hoping to find a little kitty for my apartment, though I'm a little worried having a cat might make it hard to find one for a good price in the future." Tea was saying.

"I'm not talking to you," Atem said to Bakura.

Joey managed to clear his windpipe of Lipton tea, snickered and said, "For reals, man, why haven't you asked her out yet? She already seems to like you most out of the three of us."

When his heart jumped up and started to do a little jig, Atem smashed it down and said, "Joey, she's Mormon."

"So?"

"Mormons only date other Mormons."

Bakura leaned back in his chair, watching the conversation closely out of the corner of his eyes.

Joey just gave Atem a weird look. "Sooo, become a Mormon? Tea says they believe in Jesus and all, so you probably only have to get baptized and stuff. It's like My Big Fat Greek Wedding when the dude gets baptized in the Baptist Church."

"Roman Catholic," said Bakura.

"You watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding?" asked Atem with a smile.

Bakura just gave him a droll look and tossed back another swallow of Lipton.

Atem sighed and rolled his eyes towards Joey. "Weren't you the one that said you preferred a girl more loose? If I became Mormon, I'd have to do the same thing she does."

"What, no alcohol? Dude, that might actually be a good thing for you."

Atem gave an exasperated sigh. "It's more than just the alcohol, it's a whole commitment. I'm not about to pretend to follow a religion and lie to her face just so she'll…"

Both Joey and Bakura looked at him. Atem thought he saw the younger techie steal a glance at him again.

"She'll what?" asked Joey, honestly curious.

It was getting real old how hot his face was getting. He wasn't a teenager anymore, he had grown out of this. Men didn't blush like idiots when they talked about girls to their friends.

Bakura frowned. "Were you about to say 'marriage?"

Joey cracked a laugh. "Dude, you can date people without getting married. Hell, I don't plan on ever getting hitched, and I date all the time."

"That's not exactly something to be proud of," said Atem with a grimace.

Joey just shrugged, nonplussed. "I'm a non-committal guy who likes titties, what's wrong with that?"

Atem didn't even want to bother with that one, especially not with the drink-poisoning maniac who laughed in the face of societal constructs in his free time sitting between them.

So he settled with, "Only an idiot gets involved with a relationship they know is going to end badly."

"If you've already decided that, you should move on," said that same maniac, rather sensibly.

"But you never know," said Joey. "Maybe she'll be fine with you having different standards than you. Any decent person would be, and she's really sweet. Just because she has standards doesn't mean she's going to be a tight butt schnoozy who only cares about your religious beliefs and not for who you are."

Bakura just said, "Ha!" and left it at that.

But it was enough to make Atem start to tentatively hope again. The sound of her fingers tenderly caressing the piano keys floated to him from the back of his mind.

With that hope came a tingling, warm sensation that bubbled up from his gut and made his fingers prickle. He found himself staring after her as she skipped out of the radio station, big bow bouncing atop her head. Each little bounce made her fluffy skirt jump a bit, teasing him with minute flashes of her thighs, smooth and pale with only a few freckles to speak of. The lacey hem teased him like the frilly edges of lingerie.

He backpedaled his thoughts far from there as they were shipped to a long overdue photo shoot. A new band member meant new pictures for the public and albums. This studio was use to dealing with the famous on all scales, from newbie to pro, and had signs and people directing them to each stage. Atem, who had been there once before, still felt he wouldn't get use to being shoved a box of clothes and pushed into a changing stall. Last time it had been given a set of punkster leather and plaid. This time, however, he pulled out…a skirt? A white, pleated skirt?

He stuck his head out and met the eyes of the attendant left there: some skinny guy in a fabulous getup that screamed 'gay.' "Um…hey, I think I might have been given the wrong box?"

The guy literally hopped over, like a bunny, and peered into the box.

"No, that's right. It's a shendyt. You know, the kilts worn by Egyptian Pharaoh's and stuff?"

Atem blinked. "I'm dressing up like a Pharaoh?"

The guy gave him a toothy smile that made his face look small. "It's going to be super cool, you'll like it. The photographer's got a good feel for your music."

Atem thought he'd be the judge of that and slunk back into the stall. The assistant offered to help, but Atem wanted to do as much as he could by himself, just in case the guy was gay. Though how did that work exactly? He'd have to ask Bakura some time, though bi wasn't exactly the same as gay.

Sometime later he stared back into the mirror bedecked in gold, turquoise, and wearing an almost transparent knee-length pleated skirt (he couldn't think of it any other way). Nothing wrong with a guy wearing a skirt, right? Right? And pharaohs wore tons of jewelry. Atem didn't look like a loose grandma who'd gone through one too many Target jewelry sections. Nope. Not a bit. After all, they didn't have bare, manly chests.

"Mmm, that dark skin is just splendid!" said the assistant, who Atem was valiantly trying to think of as not fabulously gay even as the man clapped his hands together and squealed. "I could totally take a bite out of that."

Don't blush. Be cool. Wait, would Tea think that? Wait, given how naïve and innocent she was, how would she react to so much bare skin?

He caught himself smiling stupidly in the mirror and pushed it off. Otaga was called in to cake on the Egyptian eyeliner and spike up Atem's hair around the faux gold Egyptian circlet (not a princess, he was an awesome pharaoh, not a princess). Joey and Bakura were soon wheeled in next to him. Joey had been dressed in the…kilt thing too, except he lacked all the jewelry. Rather he had gold shackles hanging from his wrists and a green beaded belt. Bakura, on the other hand, wore what could only be described as a priest's robe in the same off-white ivory, but tied about his middle with an elaborate, beaded belt that went along the same lines as Atem's thick collar necklace.

Half way through messing with their hair, Otaga glanced at his watched and stomped his foot.

"Where is she?" he asked one of his assistants.

"I'll go back and check," she said quickly.

"No, I will," said Mr. Fabulous and trotted off, out and around, to the women's dressing rooms.

After a few minutes he returned with a red-faced Tea, still in that frilly skirt, though the big bow had been removed off her head.

Otaga caught sight of her in Atem's mirror and froze. "Why aren't you dressed?"

Tea opened her mouth, but the guy next to her spoke for her.

"She's not comfortable in the clothes the photographer chose for her because they're too revealing."

Atem felt his opinion of the guy rise a little at his understanding tone. Not that it had been low to begin with. Just uncertain.

Otaga let out an angry sigh. "We're not doing a porn shoot, it's for artistic purposes only, and no one is going to think any less of you, now will you hurry? These people have other clients besides us."

Tea's face went redder. "Maybe if you'll let me wear a shirt under it—"

Otaga let out a heavy, rough grunt of irritation that made her flinch. "Stop being such a prude. We can't change the photographer's plans and it's only for this one time."

At the words 'only for this one time,' something changed in Tea's stance. She straightened, lifted her head, and something lit up in her eyes.

"What use are standards if not for those 'one times'? I'm sorry, sir, but I don't compromise my standards for other's convenience."

Otaga gave a rather painful tug on Atem's hair, making him wince, even as he threw a dismissive hand over his shoulder.

"Then don't be in the shoot. No skin off my neck."

Tea didn't wilt as though she had been expecting Otaga to come up with something. She kept her chin up. Though Atem couldn't help but think there had to be hurt in there. She was a part of the band, now. The whole shoot was to renew their image with her, after all. What was the point if she wasn't in it?

Mr. Fabulous frowned, murmured something to her, and turned her out of the prep room. The moment Otaga's hands moved to do touch ups on Joey, Atem slid out of his chair and out into the studio. He scanned the equipment and crowd for Tea, then figuring it wouldn't hurt, he ducked into the girls dressing room. It couldn't be much different than the mens, which had separate stalls for changing, so he wasn't too worried about seeing anything.

And, of course, his attempts had to be frustrated by Tea standing smack dab in the middle with her hands holding up a piece of cloth to her chest that revealed the lacy outlines of her underwear. Luckily, it was being pinned behind her by Mr. Fabulous, which meant she was still mostly covered.

Atem spun to leave.

"Atem?"

Shit, crap, dead dead dead— "I figured you'd change in the lockers—"

"It's okay, you can come in. I'm going back in to put on the cholly in a second anyways. You look really awesome, by the way."

Why the hell was he blushing again? Damn it, he really was a freaking girl! "Thanks. I'm sorry if it's offensive to you."

"Why would it be offensive to me?"

"Well, I, uh…you're standards…" Wasn't that a given?

"But they aren't your standards, right? You look like a pharaoh, it's so cool! So sweet!"

Her nigh squeal near the end made the embarrassment of walking in so worth it. He'd stay in this stupid get up for as long as she liked if it made her that happy.

"Okay, I got the pins up," said Mr. Fabulous. "Go try it on now."

Atem heard a rustle of fabric. Only when he heard the door click into place did he turn to find himself caught in the very amused, very shrewd horn-rimmed gaze of Mr. Fabulous. Atem scowled at him, and that only made the guy chuckle.

"I'll keep notes about your wardrobe in the photographers book," he said over the door. "Like I said, you're not the first one to have problems with showing skin, but you've been such a dear about it."

"I'm just trying to be polite," said Tea through the door. "I mean, this is your precious time and he is a pro. Thank you for doing this for me."

"No problem. I can probably do your hair and make up too if Otaga is a Stooge."

Tea laughed that high, tinkling giggle. "We have a full on conspiracy! I like you, Jim."

Ah, so his name was Jim. Better remember that.

"You aren't so bad yourself, Tea," though he looked at Atem as he said it, mirth on his tongue.

"Otaga's just stressed," said Atem. "It's nothing against you, Tea."

"I figured as much. Okay, I think I got it. It feels really weird, though."

She opened the door and stepped out. Over the long ivory sheet she'd put on a simple, folded brazier that looked like a top a genie from Arabian nights would wear, which would have cupped her breasts, had wide straps over just the curve of her shoulders, and covered little else. From beneath it, though, the sheet had been crossed over her stomach to her back, where it crossed again to run beneath the beaded hip scarf of her skirt, which had long splits up the sides to her hips. The sheet came into play again, however, in added an extra under skirt of sorts that spilled out from these splits.

Overall, Atem was impressed. Somehow, Mr. Fabulous-Jim had managed to make an glittery, artsy Egyptian slave costume look like a queen's dress instead.

Jim fluttered about her, pulling bits of sheer linen here and there and tucking the smooth bands of fabric tight about her waist.

"You okay with your shoulders?" he asked, brushing his fingers atop the bands. "How about your arms? Are you comfortable with them bare?"

"Oh! Yes. This is wonderful!" She smiled at her reflection.

"Excellent! Then I'll just need to cut here and try to cover up those safety pins."

When it came time to put that glamorized manacles on her wrists, not unlike Joey's, Jim tossed them over his shoulder and ran off to find some 'actual jewelry' since she had risen up in their role play Egyptian ranks.

Leaving Atem alone with a Tea who couldn't move without lifting pounds of linen with her.

She didn't bother to hide her appreciative look as she scanned him from foot to scalp.

"So cool," she squealed again. "Do Bakura and Joey look as cool?"

That sort of interrupted the warm purring of his ego. Would she give that same look to Joey and Bakura? No, wait, there wasn't anything to that look. It was the same look one would give an especially nice looking set of furniture or a cool poster.

He tried not to be too obvious with his disappointment as he gave her an affirmative.

"Though Bakura only dreams about being sexier than me," he said, trying at a playful smirk, then mentally beating himself over the head. "I mean—cooler, than me." Ugh, that sounded so lame.

She cocked her head, giving him a funny look. "You don't have to modify what you say to me." Then, her expression wilted. "Was what I said really that weird? I wasn't trying to be—" wilt more. "Crap, I was super melodramatic, wasn't I?"

Maybe. Yes. It was just an outfit. "No, it's fine. I'm just…" Super hyperaware of our differences now that you've made a big deal out of essentially a dress up party. "I don't know, I guess I'm being dumb by suddenly worrying that what I say or do might offend you."

"Well don't," she said seriously. "Be yourself, no matter what. If someone chooses to be offended, that's something they have to deal with themselves. That includes me."

"But I don't want to offend you," he said, and it was truth. He didn't want her to have to deal with it. He had already decided he'd be cool walking around like a beaded up, shirtless granny for the sole purpose of pleasing her.

"If something bothers me, I'll tell you, and we can get in a big fight over it and then make up," she said, and her wilted mood suddenly jumped back up to her happier pep she'd had earlier. "That's how great friendships are made, right? Big fights and make ups?"

He just stopped himself from scratching the back of his head. Otaga would kill him if he messed up his hair now. "I think it's a little more than that. And I think fights end more relationships than make."

"But anything truly worth it is only gained after hardship and trial," she said, and once more he was caught off guard by her saying such…coffee shop motivational poster stuff seemingly off the seat of her pants. "If it's worth it for us to be friends, we'll get over the fights. And I think you're worth it." A soft smile spread across her cheeks, turning her glacier blue eyes warm as a summer's breeze. "You've got a lot of goodness in you, Atem. A lot of integrity and passion and loyalty. Don't ever forget that."

When this had suddenly become a pep talk for him, he didn't know. He hadn't even realized the disappointment he had been feeling when she had stated she would not compromise her standards for anyone. But once she said those words, it stunned him that she had known before he had even given himself the time to register the pain.

It was almost like she was telling him that he was worth it. That he was worth the trial. Worth the struggle. Worth the standards….?

The warmth that had merely made him feel painfully excited burst into something hotter, burning, and he found himself falling back from the locker room, trembling.

"I better go back and get ready," he managed to get out. When had it gotten so hard to breathe? "I'll—I'll tell Otaga that you've figured out your costume with the photographer's assistant."

"Oh. Thanks! Are you okay?"

"Yeah! I'm great." And that's all he could manage before he had to flee.

And he wasn't entirely sure what had frightened him so much in the first place. Though this new feeling burned unlike any passion he could remember. It reminded him of something…something…he couldn't quite place his fingers on.

It wasn't till he was staring up into the rafters of the studio as he sat on the Egyptian throne set, waiting for the others to join him, that it hit him. It was the faraway lights in the darkness that had reminded him.

Stars. Under the stars with his grandfather, when he was very, very young, before life had poured in lemons and black tar, and all the sweet treats to try and make it worth it. But hotter, closer, as though he had somehow taken that sense of home and joy and peace and found a way to shove it into his chest and to his heart; close as blood, and hot with it.

"Atem, if you would look this way, please."

Joey and Bakura had filled in without his notice. Tea came in resplendent and exotically pretty, sending the stars he knew nothing of what to do with popping in his chest. He had to fight not to stare as the photographer laid her out on her side at Atem's feet, nor when he felt the cloth of her costume against his shins and feet.

 _I want to come home to this,_ he found himself thinking. _I…I actually want this. Gut deep. So much it hurts._

And that wasn't exactly a happy thought.


	23. Predicting the Music

**Thank you all so much for your reviews. I've really enjoyed your thoughts, for better or for worse. It let's me know if I'm doing things right, because I want to be understood.**

 **Also, I just wanted to put in a disclaimer: I always write happy endings. Just remember that.**

They got home late. He was so tired he figured he'd have no problem falling asleep and just fell into bed. When sleep eluded him, his brain kicked up, filling the black with stars and summer-warm smiles and homes and beds and the heated memory of that strange fire in the girls dressing room that brought it all up. He tried a hot shower, hoping it would wash out his brain, but when he stepped out of the bathroom he felt more awake than ever. He went to the kitchen and opened the fridge, just to remember that Mai had thrown out all his alcohol, and looked in his medicine cupboard. Benadryl could make you sleepy, so he took two of that and some melatonin.

Forty-five minutes passed in bed. His throat had gone dry and achy. He begun to remember the smell, that yeasty, almost vinegar like smell that somehow sweetened the aromatics of the fruit in wine and he found himself twitchy, unsettled, and restless.

Two in the morning, he passed through his hallway, trembling at the thoughts peering over the horizon in his mind. Somehow, on the plain of his thoughts, those in the distance were bigger than he knew them to be, and the ones closest to him seemed much smaller. A reverse of reality.

The memory of every one of his humiliating hangovers was enough to keep him going till three. Then he gave up, threw on a coat, and headed down to his VW. Ironically, he found himself thanking god that Tea's door wasn't on his way.

When he downed his first long drag of sweet rum sometime around four, the guilt actually hurt. The fact that he felt guilty at all irritated him. Why should he feel guilty? It wasn't illegal, what he was doing. He wasn't hurting anyone. If anything he was taking care of any inconveniences by making sure he got some sleep and kept reality in check. As long as he didn't drink too much, as long as he didn't get drunk, he wouldn't get a hangover and no one would be worse for wear.

But he just kept drinking. And drinking. The pain, both of the want for the fire and the ache brought by guilt and the giants at the horizon, dimmed and dimmed till he found himself staring at the ceiling, enjoying the pleasant, relaxed, even happy buzz.

Everything was okay. Everything was going to be alright.

He glanced at the clock. Five. F$%* ing five. Freaking five five five.

Somehow, his phone got into his hand. He scrolled down through…games? No, there were little people here with pictures.

Joey, freak of nature.

Who was that guy?

Why was he in his phone?

Bakura. He totally didn't act gay.

Fabulous. Mr. Fabulous and Bakura, ha ha.

Where was she? Why wasn't her picture here? He wanted to see her picture.

Displeased, he tapped on Joey's picture. The picture got big, and little dots ran underneath it. Why'd he never realized how cool those dots were? Amazing graphics. He couldn't even see the little squares in the dots. Wait, where did the dots go?

"Atem?"

Joey! Boy, he sounded tired. Idiot taking a nap. "Joey, I can't find her picture. Send me her picture." He was sleepy too.

A loud, very tired groan cracked in his ear.

Atem winced. "Ow."

" _Damn right, ow. You know what time it is?"_

"Time to get me a picture?"

" _Five. Five in the morning. And you drunk call me. Next time you call me at five in the morning you're going to be getting mugged and murdered somewhere, and I'm not going to answer, and you're going to die. You got that Atem? You. Dead_."

He poured out a pretty line of sailor words, which Atem only registered vaguely as he'd fallen into a doze, then hung up.

Atem woke up to puke, only just to open his eyes as water and vomit splashed onto his face to see his smartphone swimming in the porcelain throne. A cold spot on his face told him where it had once been. He saved it, but he needn't have bothered. It wouldn't turn on. Didn't even flicker.

So he slapped his clammy forehead on the toilet seat and dreaded the day until he fell asleep. Face in the toilet. Asleep.

At least he was functioning when someone came to find out why he wasn't answering his phone.

"Practice," said Joey, looking very unamused and very irritated. "And you better not be in puking mode."

Atem rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to be puking on anyone."

Joey gave him a droll, unimpressed look.

"Right." Joey put his hands in his pocket. "So, I now fully support the Atem and Tea shipping movement. Your drinking is out of hand—"

"First thing in the morning?"

"—and if religion is what you need to stop, I'm game."

Atem just stared at him, flabbergasted. For one, how did Joey know he had been drunk last night? He wasn't even entirely sure how he got drunk last night. Did this have something to do with why his phone was stuck to his face this morning? Oh crud, it probably did.

Still. Joey was over…reacting? Wait, what did he mean by support?

Joey started to grin.

"Jee, you're slow. I said practice, come on. And you're going to ask her out like a man. By the way, why didn't answer your phone?"

"Broke it," he said, grabbing for his keys and popping the door close behind him.

"How'd you do that?"

"By accident, obviously."

"Yeah, but what was the accident?"

Despite being put together, Atem found himself instantly irritated. His Wheaties hadn't gone down as tastefully as he had wanted them to, and he still had something ticking behind his eyes, and now he had to go play music. "Back off, man. I don't feel like talking about it."

That got him a look. He was expecting a question on what was going on, but Joey must have seen enough to fill in his own answers, as he kept it to himself until they got to the foot of the apartment complex, where Bakura and Tea waited on opposite sides of the entrance hall in awkward silence.

"About time, sleeping beauty," said Bakura, not even bothering with his usual smirk. The shadows beneath his eyes seemed especially pronounced today.

"My phone broke," said Atem, hoping that would be explanation enough and prayed Joey wouldn't say anything else.

He didn't. So he allowed himself to relax and take in Tea's outfit for today: another unique, somewhat old fashion piece that characterized a bouncy, girly personality. The bow in her head was a baby blue, and she wore capries and a blouse that billowed about her lot like a sheer curtain. While the form fitting capries complimented the loose folds of the blouse, he once more wondered at the bow.

As they set off out of the complex together, she flashed him a broad, happy smile, once more displaying her odd high amounts of energy in the morning.

"I'm going to pick out my phone today myself," she said. "Want to come along since yours broke? It would make it more fun."

Ugh. Did she have no idea what those kinds of words implied? It was almost like she was flirting with him. Wait, was she? Maybe the bow was making him think her more naïve than she actually was. Virgin didn't make her completely stupid.

"Sure," he said, trying to return her smile, even as his eyeballs cursed the sun's existence and his stomach did a dance.

Joey started to roll his eyes, but turned it into a full on head roll to make it look like he was just stretching his neck rather than scoffing. So much for his grand 'you're going to ask her out like a man.' They were already going out.

As though reading his mind, Joey wriggled next to him and pulled him to the back of their group as they walked into their complex's community building and headed towards their rented out practice studio, all just to mutter that phone shopping didn't count as a date. Since their apartment complex often catered to musicians, among other celebrities, it's extra meeting room was sound proofed and already had their instruments set up inside, thanks to Mai's assistants.

Bakura slinked behind his racks of keyboards. With a loud crack of knuckles, a new energy seemed to fill him and he started flipping on switches. Joey tapped his hips before deciding on the basic drum set. Best not to get too fancy early on in the game.

"So, Pharaoh," said Bakura as Tea picked up her guitar and quietly set to work tuning it—by ear, of course. "You got anything for us? Or have you been too hung up?"

Atem ignored that jab. "Actually, I do. Lyrics and all."

Tea perked up, face lighting up. "You got words to it? Oh! Sweet! I just figured out an accompaniment to it."

"Not that one," he said quickly, fighting down a little squirm. "This is the other one. About the minarets."

Joey just plucked out some drumsticks and looked at him expectantly. Bakura's cheek twitched.

"Minarets," he said, doing a crappy job of trying not to sneer. "Aren't those Muslim prayer towers?"

"More or less." Atem slid onto the piano bench and opened his notebook on the music stand. "And you're to keep your mouth shut about my piano skills, freak. Not everyone can play the piano with their toes, including someone who's mainly a cellist."

"As you tell me every time. Will it stop me? Probably not."

Atem just sighed, squinted at his first penciled out note, and found his place on the keys. He still had to picture the taped on letters in order to find 'C,' but he had specifically written this song with the harmony included, so cello wouldn't do.

Besides, he could play.

He started into the introduction, taking it easy on his left hand by keeping it to two notes. He tried to remember the call, remember the feeling he was trying to convey, as he sung the first words. As the words that had haunted him slipped past his lips, the muscles that had been coiled in his head and gut since he'd woken up puking that morning eased. The lyrics were a voice given to that inner part of him he tried so hard to keep asleep. The notes kept it safe. Distant. Beautiful.

" _Round the coals of your desire,_

 _because no one ever cared_

 _for the heat of your fire._

 _Back, back, back to the minaret._

 _Burn out, crumble, left for scorn—_

 _because they lost the date_

 _that you were born._

 _Back, back, back to the minaret._

 _And if anyone looks round_

 _to stamp out what's left_

 _of you or your sound,_

 _Back, back, back to the minaret._

 _Calling to pretend heaven_

 _with your face to the ground,_

 _back, back,_

 _back to the minaret._

 _But say there's something_

 _that's meant you to sing,_

 _out for all your desires_

 _and burn that sweet fire,_

 _then is there something there?_

 _Back, back,_

 _back at the minaret?_

 _So who stands alone to call out_

 _The truth no one wants to hear?_

 _Just fuel the doubt,_

 _Atop your minaret._

 _'Cause no heaven can be reached!_

 _No solid hand, just dirt,_

 _And a minaret!_

 _So go back,_

 _Back,_

 _Back to the minaret._

 _But say there is something_

 _No there is not._

 _Back, back,_

 _Back at the minaret._

 _Back, back,_

 _Back at the minaret."_

The end still displeased him. The clunky piano keys couldn't begin to lead into the warbling, sweeping Adhans he had listened to on Youtube. He almost wished he could turn around and grab his cello without getting funny looks from his band members, just so he could try and capture that beautiful sound, as he had been trying to do since that day in Egypt.

Joey started to clap, grinning, and Tea quickly picked up suit. But Bakura just looked at him, brow puckered and arms folded across his chest.

"Did you just write a song about your religious conflict?" he asked, rather blandly.

Atem frowned. "No. It's more than that. It's about…look, there's a reason it's in this format and not in an essay. Can you work with it or not?"

Bakura shrugged and swept his chin around in such a wide circle, it cracked his neck. Were all his joints made out of freaking Pop Rocks?

"You've already given me the main stream of harmony to work with. That's more than you usually do." Bakura laid out a few chords out of thin air that turned Atem's simple, one to two finger harmony into a full on symphony. But he shook his head and messed around with a few more buttons.

Knowing he'd be at it for a while, and pleased Bakura had reacted this way (the albino was never completely into his songs, or at least had something against showing it), he turned to Joey.

"What do you think? What's the heartbeat?"

"Something reverberating," said Joey, tapping a cymbol. "Something I can drag out with little patters at the end of your 'mineret.' For some reason, I'm really digging that hard 't.' It's almost like a beat in and of itself."

Atem nodded, pleased Joey had thought the same thoughts as him, and turned to Tea. Meanwhile, Joey turned back to hitting his various percussion tools for the longest sounding beat.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"It's thought provoking," she said, closing her eyes. "I get the feeling you wanted something with the cello at the end. Like a try at a call to prayer. You've had a few of those, but they're always in the background, just Arabic highlights, but this sounds…like it would be almost the center point."

He stared. How could he not? She had done it again, reading him like she knew him more than she did, or watched him closely, or just…

"How did you know that?" he asked before he could stop himself.

She opened her eyes to give him frown. "I've listened to all your music, Atem. I remember all of it. It's your style. I can almost predict where you're going to go." She said it as though it should have been obvious.

Joey, who caught these words inbetween mallets, gave a low whistle. "Damn, girl. I've been listening to his music since I was fifteen and I can't do that."

She ducked her chin down, trying to look busy with her guitar. "It's not that big of a deal. What would you like me to work on Atem? I imagine you want to work on the cello bits more," she gave him a wry little smile. "Even though you've probably played them more times than you have the piano."

Yes. Though he didn't see how her being able to catch on to his music style made her see into his actions as well. But that had been exactly what he had been thinking as he played the song—that he was dying to pick up his cello and hum along to the bleating memory, even though it wouldn't be much different from what he usually played.

He felt heat rise to his cheeks. That was embarrassing. How obsessed he was with these Arabic singers. It's just, no one would ever dare to put an Adah into a contemporary rock song. It was essentially sacrilege. That call to prayer had to stand out alone, as their God did, and no other voices should exist.

But his still did.

"Um, well. You're in charge of the guitar now. You can work with Bakura on the accompianent."

He saw a flicker of consternation on her features, but she just gave him a thumbs up and trotted over to the frowning, focused Bakura. Atem wondered if he had just made a mistake. But what else could she do?

Even so, he had just picked up his cello in time to watch Bakura wave Tea away with a scowl and a sharp bark. She didn't fight it, but backed away readily and retook her seat by the amp speaker, fingers to her strings. Nothing crossed her face to tell Atem about how she had taken Bakura's rejection. She just strummed.

Atem tried to get into his cello strings. Tried to reach that nirvana where he only heard the pull and drag of the bow, but instead found himself comforting the knot in his gut with the cello body's vibrations.


	24. Needing Cell Phones

**Since this chapter is so short, I am up to nagging about updating the next chapter early. Until then, happy camping, I'm going back to oozing about like the human shaped pile of jello I am. So sleepy...**

Mai was obviously suspicious when Atem said he needed a new phone. But it wasn't like she couldn't stop him from getting a new one, and therefore, tagging along. Even so, she didn't seem to be happy that he was there.

And it only took a few, initially awkward moments to see why.

Mai had hinted towards a softer warmth towards Tea than the other boys, but with only a quiet Atem in the backseat, it came out in full force. She was in love with this girl, almost as though she really had adopted Tea as her own child.

"I just love those big bows!" she said, patting the blue bow on Tea's head. "They're so you! I wish I could pull that off."

Instead of asking why and insisting Mai would look good in anything, as Atem had come to expect from girl's conversations, Tea nodded. "Yeah, you have to practically be a little girl to get away with them. Are you sure I'm not too old?"

"Are you kidding me? Psch. I showed you all those 50's pictures, didn't I? Those girls were in their early twenties. You're fine."

Ah. So that's where Tea was getting all her out of date fashion ideas. As the girls talked, it became more than apparent that Tea had been letting Mai more or less dress her with little input on her part. Mai apparently found it a pleasant challenge to work with Tea's modesty standards rather than frustrating, and Atem just couldn't help but be amazed at this aspect of Mai. He hadn't known she loved fashion so much. Yeah she tossed out their old clothes and threw fits when they walked around wearing dirty shirts, but she didn't nitpick their fashion, and she never wore anything outside the usual business wear one would expect of a career woman.

At the phone store, Tea and Mai all but skipped together to the display of phones.

"Purple, we need purple," said Mai.

"Oo! These are so fancy!"

Mai smiled widely, pleased by Tea's amazement. "Have you ever had a phone, sweetie?"

"I had some pay by the minute flip phones, but that's all."

Mai all but squealed. "Oh! I got to show you all the latest apps! And pictures and browsers and—over here, over here, check this out."

"Whoa! Amazing!"

Atem found himself standing stupidly in the doorway, just watching all this, before he noticed the sales person making their way to him. He told the man his problem and gave him his broken phone, then followed him to the tables where the guy said he'd look up his plan and warranty. Atem was sure it was covered, so he just turned and watched Mai be someone he didn't know anymore.

Maybe she didn't like boys?

Though Atem had to admit, there was something fun about giving something that was everyday to most people to someone who had grown up without the opportunity. Unspoiled, he guessed was the word.

As Mai wrapped up Tea's phone deal (painfully like a mom would for her teenage child), he slid in close to Tea, who looked overwhelmed in a blissful way as she scrolled through her new phone.

"Hey, Tea."

She didn't glance up at him. "Yeah?"

He hesitated. "Would you…" At the last second, he chickened out. "Would you work on that one song with me after this?"

Her eyebrows pinched together at something confusing, but she gave a, "Sure. Though we should name it before it gets confusing. Why didn't you play it during practice?"

"Well, you know," just like dancing naked in front of his bandmates to play something so obviously intimate to everyone but her. "We got caught up in 'Minarets' and we didn't have time afterwards."

"I guess so."

Ugh. Joey was going to rag on him if he didn't do something date-ish. Make it anything that involved responsibility and work and Joey wouldn't remember for the world, but involve women, even indirectly, and he was on it like a micromanaging CEO.

So he managed to add, "Want to do dinner afterwards?"

"Sure! But I should buy it this time."

That would definitely make it non-dateish. "Nah, I can pay. You've just gotten here and you're saving up. I've got nothing to spend on, let me."

She actually looked up from her phone at this to give him a little frown. For a minute, he worried she'd ask him to come out straight and tell her he was asking her on a date, but she seemed to think better of it and shrugged.

And for some reason, that made him feel guilty. He wasn't being honest…

But before he could do anything more, Mai signed the last paper and did her usual manager-herding to usher them out of the store and back into the car. Since she didn't technically live in their apartment complex, she pulled up to the front of their building to drop them off. Tea gushed her thanks for the final time and stepped out. Just as he was about to follow, Mai clicked her nails on the side of her car for his attention. Bemused, he came to her window, just to find her claws in his shirt and his head yanked inside.

"Don't think I didn't hear you," she said as though she hadn't just jerked his head in like a gangster threatening the noob who'd compromised their drug bust. "You better keep it in your pants around her, you got that? You respect her."

Atem pushed off her hand and scrambled back out of the car. "Damn it, Mai, who do you take me for?"

Her eyes narrowed and her lips pressed together in a very 'did you really just ask me that?' look.

"No drinking." She said. "And if I hear even a whisper of you sexually harassing her, I will line you up for fitness sessions, back to back, for an entire week and send in recommendations to triple A groups, just for you."

Atem just stared. Mai was taking this to a weird, melodramatic level. Yeah he could see she liked Tea, but really?

But a small voice in the back of his mind told him she had good reason to worry about him. At least, in the drunk department.

"Like I'd do that around her," he said gruffly, trying not to meet Tea's curious eyes from the doorway of the complex. Thank god she was over there and not over here listening to all of this.

Mai sniffed, told him she'd be expecting him on time to their nutritionist appointment that next morning, then drove off without waiting for him to move away. He swore under his breath before trotting up to Tea's side. She opened the door for him with a small smile and led the way back to his apartment.


	25. Vanilla Deep

He did his best to hide how his hands shook on putting the key into the lock.

"Mai is probably the sweetest, most giving person I've ever met," said Tea happily.

Atem snorted. "That is not the woman I signed a contract with."

"Wasn't she like this when you guys were new?"

He pushed open his door and stepped inside. The smell of home did nothing to calm his nerves. "She was never like that. I think she's sees us more as liabilities than clients."

"Oh…"

He found himself floundering for what to do about the door. Close it, of course, but that gave an awful finality to the fact that they were alone…in his apartment…wasn't there something against this? Didn't she have a standard against this? I mean, she had standards about how much shoulder and knee to show, there had to be something about being alone in an apartment with single guy.

Unless she didn't consider him like that…like an available man…

Oh, that did horrors to his nerves. When they got to his music room, he didn't even know what to do with himself, and feared he'd just end up standing there in the middle doing nothing, panicking. Why was he panicking? There was nothing new or weird about this, it was just a girl. He knew how to deal with women. He'd been in way more awkward situations than this—awkward, naked situations even. Why was he freaking out!?

"Um, Atem?"

"J-just trying to figure out where I want to start." Oh god, did he just stutter? This was a horrible idea. Why did he think of this? WHO THOUGHT OF THIS?

"Well, have you thought up any lyrics to it yet?"

I love you, I love you, I love you? "Actually, I was hoping you'd brainstorm with me on that." Nice save.

"I'm not really good with…words."

He found that hard to believe with how she pulled Gandalf ready quotes from the seat of her pants. "Then I'll be good with words. You just give me ideas, yeah?"

"Could I play cello while we do that?"

"Course! Play away!"

She gave him a gracious smile, but didn't show the exuberance she had earlier as she picked up the goldenwood cello and sat down on a stool in the corner. He wondered how much of it had been for Mai, or if she had just burnt herself out on her excitement over her new phone.

Stopping himself from pulling on his clammy fingers like a real goober, he decided Tea had the right of things and went to pull out his second cello, which he kept on hand since his goldenwood traveled with him. Backups were always a good thing. On the way to the piano bench he grabbed a spare notebook and pencil. Even the act of pulling out the instrument and tuning the strings went a long way in calming the screaming, flailing idiot in his head running around in circles.

Tea stopped plucking to listen.

"Your G is a little flat," she said, almost distantly, then flinched. "I mean! If you wanted to know. You didn't ask, but—"

He found himself laughing. "What are you freaking out for? Go for it. Spares me the effort of getting out my tuner or banging the same key on the piano over and over."

Pink brushed across her nose and, as she led him in tuning his strings, he began to hope that maybe she was as nervous as him. And for the same reason.

 _'I'm sorry, sir, but I don't compromise my standards for other's convenience.'_

He paused half way through a G Major scale. Tea just kept plucking, probably not thinking anything of it.

After staring at his bridge for the space of several hard, anxious heartbeats, he picked up his pencil and leaned over to the paper.

Compromise…

"What you thinking?" she asked. "Is the brainstorm starting?"

He hesitated. Was this really the place? Or should he hold off till he was alone?

 _'You've got a lot of goodness in you, Atem. A lot of integrity and passion and loyalty. Don't ever forget that.'_

"You know all those motivational posters that talk about standing up for what's right even when other people won't and, you know, being uncompromising about it?" he found himself saying, strumming the strings for the comfort of the sound. "How do you know when you're standing strong for truth and when you're just being…"

"Shallow minded?" she said, picking up the bow. "Bigoted? Stuck to your ways?"

"Yeah."

She pulled the bow across an empty A string. Then slowly moved into a common, popular Bach cello suite. After a few lines of notes, he joined in, knowing the simple tune by heart. He wondered if there were any practiced cellist who didn't.

At a rest before either a repeat or movement on to the next stanza, she paused.

"How do you know how to follow me?" she asked.

He gave her a blank look. "Uh, it's Bach's first cello suite. I mean, like his freaking theme song. Everyone knows it."

"Everyone who has played cello enough or have heard it."

He ran a nail across the A string. "Yeah. More or less."

"So, how would someone know what I was playing was Bach's cello suite if they've never heard it or haven't practiced enough cello to have learned it?"

He wondered where she was going with this. "They just wouldn't."

"Exactly. But does that mean the suite disappears or that, if they hear it and play it under a different name, that it stops being Bach's first cello suite? What if someone who has never heard it comes and tells you that you're playing the song all wrong? Or even think you're stupid for wanting to play it, because they have never heard it?"

"What are you getting at?"

"I think truth is a lot like that, sometimes." She pressed her fingertips to the strings, but didn't move. "Unless you've heard it, bothered to seek it out, you can't know. You have the sound of truth for yourself to know whether or not you're standing for what is right rather than just being a stubborn, uncompromising bigot. Until then, no one can tell you whether or not you are one, because, in the end, how will you know the difference between what their saying and the truth if you haven't heard it first?"

She signaled the end of her little spiel by moving back into the next movement in the cello suites.

"But how do you know?" he asked. There was something intrinsically uncomfortable about that question that made his nerves jump.

Because, honestly, there was no way to know, for sure, that what you knew was truth. That was the whole point to being open minded: to be ready to receive the truth when it should come, or better ways of truth.

"Reason," she said. "You have it for a reason—badum dum! Double reason."

"Oh ha ha."

"But really. Use your brain and find out if it is. If you do, you'll just know. You have to want to know, though, and it can't be some flimsy, back-seat kind of caring either."

"Where is all of this coming from?"

She hesitated at the end of her bow and glanced up at him. The uncertainty in her gaze wasn't unlike the night before her first concert, or even the very moment when she was told she could play for them.

"Atem, do you even care to know?"

"I want to know everything about you," he said, only realizing, with horror, what he had said a split-second later.

Her stare didn't help. There was no way he could shrug that one over her head now. Naivety or not, she had to have heard that.

He dropped his gaze to the floor, hoping to hide behind his bangs. His heart was beating far too fast, and he had begun to furiously regret that he had suggested they be alone. If he had been with the others, nothing like that would have slipped out. He would have been more guarded. More reasonable.

As the seconds ticked by, he grew more and more afraid.

Just as he was about to jump up and flee, she spoke.

"Why would you want to know anything about me?"

The flat, low tone startled him. It was at such a contrast to her usual peppiness, and when she hadn't been peppy, she had just been subdued. This was…

He looked up to find her expression blank, almost lost, as though she was staring through him and at a hopeless maze.

It was at such a contrast to how he saw her, he could only get out, "What?"

"I'm the weirdo you can't have fun with because I won't have sex and I won't party or drink. My standards make you uncomfortable, religion makes you flinch, and I know even you have called me 'Ms. Perfect' at one point or another. Nobody wants to get to know someone who they think is perfect for any other reason than to dig out their flaws." She stopped there, and her forcibly dull, blank expression started to unnerve him as she said, just as flatly, "Is that what you want to know?"

He almost said 'no!' right off the bat, but stopped himself, alarmed by this sudden change in her demeanor. But he could tell there was a right and wrong answer, and that he had to tread carefully.

Because he could feel, more than see, that this was a kind of test. She was showing him something private, some deep part of her, in order to see how he would react. To find the truth.

"You are not your religion," he said. "There's more to you than that."

The dry, humorless smile that spread across her face wasn't a happy one.

"Thank you for realizing that."

She made an attempt to play more notes, but they were reedy and weak, and she gave up after only a few.

But it gave him enough time to think of something else to say.

"Are you afraid I think of you like Bakura does?"

Another dry grin, though this one little more than a twitch of her mouth. "Don't you? Though in a more polite way, of course. Got to be tolerant and open minded, after all."

It was almost hostile. But instead of scaring him, it just made him sad.

Because she was right, in a way. Staring back at him was the effect of all Bakura's bullying and Joey's teasing and Atem's mistakes that she had kept hidden from them. He could see that she wanted to act like she didn't care. After all, she believed she was just doing what was right; what God asked of her. But rather than supporting her, like Mr. Fabulous Jim had in pinning the sheet beneath her costume, he had promised to keep her safe at the club, he had kept out of the way when Mr. Otaga let out his frustration on her, he had let his bandmates press her about drinking, he hadn't talked to the photographer, he hadn't stopped Joey or Bakura from saying whatever they pleased—

And there was only one way to fix it.

He met her eyes and told her what he really thought.

"I think you're amazing. I've never seen someone try so hard to be good to the best way they knew how like you. I've never met someone so hard working, so kind, so intelligent, so sweet and witty and thoughtful. You say things that usually would take someone months of hard thinking to come up with as a side note to an everyday conversation like it's nothing. And every time I hear your music…" He tried to take a deep breath, but found he couldn't. "You move me."

She stared, her eyes jumping from one of his to the other.

When she just continued to stare, he said, gently, "I think you're wonderful, Tea."

Then, as though it couldn't get worse, Tea erupted into tears.

She tried to reign it back in by hugging the neck of the cello and hiding her face behind them and it, but the more she tried to fight the sobs, the louder she gasped.

"I-I-I'm sorry, I'll just—I—" she got up, trying to put down the cello without breaking it and run to the door at the same time.

Wait-nononono! He had finally made a break through, and she was running?! If she ran out now, got her defenses up again—

He caught onto her wrist.

"Wait, Tea, it's alright, calm down."

She kept her face turned from him, and her wrist trembled.

The little idiot in his head started getting up to start his panic sprints. "Here, sit down, it's okay."

"This is so humiliating," she croaked.

He let out a little bark of mirth. "Oh, like you haven't seen me at my worst. If it helps you feel any better, I remember puking on your feet."

"At my feet. You didn't puke on them."

"Close enough. Seriously, don't go. I…I want to know about this too."

Ugh, could he think of anything cornier to say? No, that's what he meant to say, he wasn't no unfeeling alpha male. He could handle this. He could. Yeah, that was it.

At least she sat down on his bean bag. She kept her hand in front of her face though, even as he spied the tears dripping off her chin. Thankful that he'd had that huge cold before flying out on their tour, he grabbed a half-filled box of Kleenex off the piano and handed it to her.

"Just—just pretend I don't exist for a moment," she pleaded. "Seriously, I don't know where this is coming from, I swear I'm not an overemotional boob."

"So what if you were?" he asked. "Is there something wrong with boobs?"

That got him a laugh, albeit a choked, wet one.

"Do you mean breasts or the kind I'm talking about?"

"Both, of course. Why'd you even ask?"

"I can never tell with you." She lowered her hand to rub her face with the kleenix, and he got a brief view of her flushed face. "When you're sober you're a perfect gentleman, but when you're drunk you're the all over the place kind of pervert. Which one's the real one?"

And riding the high of this new level of intimacy, he said, "The perverted one, of course." Wait. "Uh, um, I'm not trying to get in your pants right now or-," No! Don't talk about sex! Bad! Bad! "I mean, you're really pretty," Freckles. Legs. Butt. Big blue eyes. Aw man. "Really, really gorgeous, actually—but I-I-I mean, I'm not interested in you just because I think you're hot, I really do want to just know about you, not that I…I should shut up now."

At least her sobs had abated. She had even calmed enough to peer at him over her hands. Her eyes were even more blue all wet with tears and rimmed in pink.

"No, keep going. It's hilarious watching you dig."

"I've reached the bottom of this hole."

"Then come back out, because you're fine." She gave a big sniff and dared to lower her hands, showing him one of those soft, summer-breeze smiles.

His insides cramped and once more started spreading that hot feeling through to his fingers. Stars. The smell of night dew, earth, grass and that big night sky of stars.

"You're amazing too," she said, the smile turning her eyes unbearably tender. "I like you. So much."

He'd had his cello down at 'amazing.' By the time she had finished with 'so much,' he had already knelt on the floor and reached for her.

The ease in which she allowed him to pull her close was like the sound of the crowd when the first notes hit the air.

But the vanilla sweet taste of her lips sent him higher than the lights and noise ever could.

 **Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading! No, this isn't the end. Just a plea on my part to hear what you think so far. ^.^ Anything works, good or bad, I'd love to hear it.**


	26. Strawberry Time on SNL

**An early update. Because I can. And because I'm being held in wait by a story I want to finish and have been reintroduced to the pain.**

Chapter 26

The interview Mai had mentioned had to do with Saturday Night Live, which explained the evil look she had given him. SNL was a pretty big deal.

It was also a bad idea.

Because Atem was high. Not high on any drug or fume, but sky high nonetheless and unable to stop grinning like an idiot. It just got worse when Tea slid in to the luxury van next to him and let him throw an arm over her shoulder.

"Morning," he breathed into her hair with a nuzzle. She jumped and stiffened, but laughed in a way that told him she was just caught off guard.

Joey looked back at the giggle and his eyes went big, followed by a face cracking grin that showed every one of his teeth.

"Well, ain't that precious," he said as he turned back around. "My ship's set sail."

Bakura didn't look back once. Nor did he say a single word.

And then there was the TV set, all lights and glamour and gold wood floor and cityscape. Atem took it in, high, high, so high he didn't think twice about taking her hand in front of all those watching people, despite Mai's strict command that he keep his relationship under wraps.

Tea's hand was clammy. She was nervous. That somehow made him high as well, as he found it both endearing and provocative. Would her hands be like that the night she let him take that step closer? All shyness and apprehension?

And the lights brought out her pallor, but it just made the Dolphinus freckles across her nose more prominent. And because he was so high, so very high, he snuck a peck on her nose while the host was preoccupied with Joey.

The rising excitement from the crowd and catcalls distracted the host, who had missed Atem's sly little show of affection.

Bakura's foot on Atem's yanked him down a few clouds.

"Get a hold of yourself!" he hissed, eyes darker than ever and promising something murderous.

Atem stared at him even as he nursed his foot. "What's gotten into you?"

"I should ask you the same thing," whispered the pianist. "Let go of her hand already."

"What's going on over there?" said the host, a large, happy man with perfectly done salt and pepper hair. He made even the blunt, almost accusatory question sound like the prelude to a good joke.

"Oh, nothing much," said Joey before any of them could think of what to say. "Atem just recently hooked up with Tea and can't believe his luck, and Bakura doesn't like it when other people are happy without him."

A rare cloud of pink flushed across Bakura's pale cheeks and forehead. It made him look blotchy and feverish.

Atem, however, just smiled as Tea turned full on red. She looked far cuter when she blushed.

The host couldn't resist turning his attention to the happy couple after that, and Joey obligingly pulled to the side, smirking. With every blunt question the host gave, she'd give a squeaked, flustered answer, to which the crowd would laugh. Atem only allowed three before he stepped in, suddenly back to Earth with a flush of protective irritation.

"Stop it. You're going to make her dump me." He at least had the mind to not show it. He even tried his winning, smexy smile he reserved for concerts.

As he had intended, the lot of them got so caught up in swooning that the host's next questions went practically unheard. At least he got the hint, but Bakura was in no mood to be answering anything.

When it came time to introduce their new single, Atem had to help Tea up, as she had pinched in on herself in fright. He tried to whisper an apology to her under the applause as they walked up to the stage, but she was unresponsive, and her hands shook as they took up the guitar. Thank god there was a stool there for her, or he feared she would have made quite the site with her knees buckled over each other and her elbows tucked so close to her sides they nearly pierced her.

Despite his foul mood, Bakura eased into the synthesizers at the beginning of _Minarets_ like the first caress of morning light. Like a call, Atem had told him. A call….

The words that had been so therapeutic to him before rolled out of him with all the golden well being he felt. He didn't fear them anymore. He didn't fear the feeling they spoke of. Nothing could hurt him now, not even that memory of the minaret in an Egypt that hid his father.

And then to hear Tea's and Joey's voice rising up to curl up into his, calling to the morning opened by Bakura's keys, a clear sky alight with blue fire and white brilliance. It was the second time Tea sung one of their songs without copying Rebecca, and he thought his heart might burst.

Despite the small size of the studio audience, the applause broke through the roof. Even the camera men were hollering and raising their hands above their heads. The host, who had gotten up with the microphone to add his comments just stood there on that gold wood floor, speechless. The applause went on and on until Atem thought it might never end.

At long last, when silence finally came down, the host brought the microphone back to his mouth, eyes bright.

"Oh my god."

Mai was not so pleased. Freaking Mozart could play for her in person and she'd just shrug it off.

"What was that?" she all but snarled in Atem's face.

"What?"

"Hanging all over Tea like some—"

"Shit, Mai, I just held her hand."

"Still are," chortled Joey, and suddenly Tea's sweaty grip vanished.

"You humiliated her! And to be so obvious with kissing her—that was public television, you little brat! Don't you have any sense of common decency?"

Atem could care less about common decency, though he did crash back down to earth with a nasty bang at the mention of Tea. It didn't help that she had slunk away to the wall of the studio besides them and curled her hands behind her back.

"Tea? Oh no, Tea, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean…" Good feeling gone. Not even a whole twenty-four hours had passed and he was already screwing everything up. Oh no, oh no oh no—

"It's okay," she said softly, eyes to the floor. "I just, um…maybe not do that again, yeah?"

"Of course, I'm so sorry, I just got caught up in—I'm just so happy—"

"That much is obvious," said Bakura with a low growl.

That brought Mai turning on him, hackles raised and teeth bared. "And what the hell is up with you? I know you have a constant stick up your ass, but you nearly froze the entire studio with your attitude! How many times do I have to lecture you on how to act like a normal, pleasant human being?"

"I don't know about froze," slid in Joey with a snicker. "Coulda cooked an egg on his face."

"Stay out of this, Joseph," she snapped.

"Okay! Okay! Freak."

Atem had just noticed the tech hands starting to stare and knew it was time to wrap things up. "Look, we introduced our single and they loved it, can that be enough until we get to the car? You're making a scene."

"I'm making a scene?" But she too noticed the techies, who quickly looked away. With a loud sniff she straightened her tight little tweed jacket and set to ushering them down the stairs and back into their parking lot.

She chewed them out good in the car, only stopping when Tea looked like she was about to cry, but she needn't have bothered. Three days later the feedback from the radio and TV stations arrived with _Minarets_ rated number three among the latest single releases. Hitting in the top twenty-five was enough to celebrate about. But the top ten? Even the top five?

But that was only one of the many joys in Atem's life. He'd been sober for three days straight and he couldn't remember a time he enjoyed being sober so much. Tea's attentions and shy confessions of her affection for him sent him close to laughing. And though he knew without asking that he couldn't kiss her senseless, the little kisses speckled here and there were enough to send him back up into the atmosphere again.

It wasn't till he tripped on the treadmill daydreaming about her, and Joey laughed so hard he tripped too, that he began to think that maybe there was something unhealthy about all this. Still, he laughed along as Joey helped him to his feet and they both made sure they weren't heinously injured.

Bakura said nothing. When they had to be in a room together, he avoided Atem's eye, but every so often he would catch his black, steady glare.

At the end of week one, while Tea was out with Mai for a girl date and Atem found himself with some now rare time to himself, he was just heading back into his music room to spew forth the music trumpeting around his skull when Bakura walked in.

Atem didn't even ask how he walked through an automatically locking door. Bakura did it so often it would be redundant to say anything, so he just raised an eyebrow at him.

Bakura just stared back, expression unfathomable.

"Well?" Atem asked.

Bakura jerked a shoulder. "Not even going to offer me a beer first?"

"Mai confiscated all my alcohol."

"Yes, because that's so effective. How'd your phone break again?"

Figuring Bakura wouldn't be leaving anytime soon, Atem sauntered into the living room and threw himself down on an extra wide lounge chair. They needed to talk anyways.

"If you're here to say something about how I run my love life, forget it," said Atem. "You're prejudice against her is stupid and you know it, so get over yourself."

Bakura's eyes narrowed. "I can dislike whoever I damn please." He hesitated and slipped a pale hand into the pocket of his black skinny jeans. "And you can date whoever you damn please, but you're the one being the idiot. You know this is going to end badly."

Despite the prick of chill in his gut, Atem just shrugged. "No need to sound so melodramatic. I'll be fine, so stop worrying. Is there something else you came here for?"

For a long moment, Bakura just looked at him with those cave like, unreadable eyes. Having known Bakura for years, Atem wasn't bothered by the quiet and looked right back. It took time for Bakura to unearth the words he had buried beneath his grim and nasty attitude. His true feelings and thoughts, after all, were fragile, tremulous things that crumbled in the sunlight and shattered if brought up too quickly.

With a slow blink, Bakura sighed and bowed his head. "It's unnerving to watch you. I don't…I've never seen you like this. I'm afraid of what you'll be like when you finally fall. I've seen you at your lowest, I know what kinds of things you try to smother, and I don't trust her to keep you safe from those, but there's nothing…absolutely nothing I can do."

Atem straightened, concern tightening up his chest like a jacket. "Bakura…"

And then the old Bakura was back with a snap of his head and a toss of too-white hair. He flashed Atem that stupid, creepy fanged smirk.

"But you're right. I'm being a melodramatic pussy and it's starting to make me nauseous." He raised his hand and wiggled his fingers at him. "Ta ta. Have fun getting no booty and no life."

And with that, Bakura left.


	27. All About Quality

Chapter 27

Over the next month, Atem's muse not only gained a boost of genius, but multiplied as well. Atem and Tea fell into the routine of ending their days in Atem's music room, where he'd play cello or piano and she would listen, occasionally pulling down the flute or plucking on the piano or cello. From there, she'd pick out bits of melodies that came from his messing around and designed new songs, to which his incessant muse would pump out lyrics like a fountain. The words came to him in waves of silk and brilliant colors, and each time his bandmates would finally add their parts and they managed to play it through the first time, he felt as though he were being blinded—blinded like a destitute man lost in a cave is when he's pulled out into a sunlit valley atop a mountain peak, pressed up against the hard blue sky double reflected by a glass lake.

And the inspiration didn't stop with him. It filled him to the brim and overflowed, bleeding into the others, even to Bakura who had more or less gone back to normal. Booming rhythms and brilliant accompaniment brought each of Tea and Atem's compositions to fluorescent, blood tingling life till any who heard were left breathless.

Mai could hardly keep up with them. Soon they not only had the three numbers she asked for, but an entire album, with extras to begin the next. Their Egyptian photos came back from the graphic design department, and Atem not-so-secretly took his blown up copy and hung it in his room so Tea's face could be the last thing he saw before falling asleep. Even in the picture she had that indescribable glow to her, and though Atem was clearly the pharaoh and center of the picture, she outshone him.

Nearly a month after its release, _Minarets_ made it to number one on the charts, breaking the record for shortest time between publication and the top.

Oh yes. There would be revelries, and there was no way Mai could justify keeping Tea out of the loop, since she had been the one to help write the song. Thus, instead of heading down to the closest clubbing joint, Mai, Atem, and Joey worked to set up a party in one of the meeting rooms of the complex's community house. Their favorite foods were catered in, a DJ was hired, and the party invitations proclaimed it to be a non-alcoholic, non-recreational drug zone. They got more than a few weird looks as the party goers walked in, and Atem was sure that Mai was hearing all sorts of questions. A few even declined to come at all (after all, what's a party without booze?), but the majority came, not wanting to miss out on the glory of _Millenial Sands_ miraculous rise from semi-obscurity.

But even if none of them had come, it had been worth it to watch Tea burst into happy tears on hearing what they had done for her.

"Jeeze, it's not that big of a deal," said Joey, brushing the back of his hand over his nose to hide his embarrassment.

"You'll dance with me, right?" Atem had asked, wondering if he should try to tone down his excitement while she bawled her eyes out.

"You—you don't think I'm a freak?"

"Oh, you're a freak alright," said Bakura, making his bandmates flinch. "A stuck up, tight-ass prude through and through, but even you deserve a treat for all your work. And like Joey said, it's no big deal. People wriggle around like stupid idiots without alcohol every day."

Joey snickered. "Wow, that was almost nice."

"Shut up."

And reward it was. The DJ brought the lights to flash across the softly lit room, Atem had as many gyros as he could ever want, other stars and acquaintances from the music community filled the room with happy white noise, and he got to watch Joey beat Bakura at a sauerkraut eating contest (not that Bakura was all that into it, but the cross-eyed, twisted expression he had on first tasting the spicy cabbage was worth it).

And Tea, resplendent and beautiful in a curve hugging little red dress with leggings showed him just how well she could move what her mother had given her. The night-sky of the white-hot passion she had lit within him sparkled and burst with shooting stars, brilliant moons, and gems of every hue as he watched her tip back her head, stray strands of brown hair flying from her pins, and laughed out loud for joy.

If he had known this was what a party could be like sober, he would have never begun. But, then, it wasn't like he was always drunk at parties. There had been a few, though he couldn't understand why he couldn't remember in the face of her delirious happiness, then his as well as she allowed him to slide close and place his hands on her hips.

He didn't notice when Bakura slipped away. He wouldn't have even known if one of Otaga's assistants, wearing a little black number he knew Tea would never touch, had not asked him if he knew why. She pouted when he hadn't anything to tell her. Across the way he could see Mr. Fabulous—Jim—munching on a gyro and making small talk with one of Mai's assistants.

At the height of the party, Seto Kaiba came accompanied by his little seen wife and son, who couldn't have been any older than eight. The moment he spotted Atem and Tea he gave them a look, to which the two instantly understood as a summon. As they made their way towards them, Atem took in the slender, silver-haired woman at Kaiba's side. She had an ethereal beauty to her, probably because of the prematurely gray hair she didn't try to hide. She couldn't have been yet thirty. Mokuba, his son, shared his dark hair and piercing blue eyes that calmly watched Atem and Tea as they approached.

"You did good," Seto said simply, bowing a chin towards Atem. "Forgive the _Duelists_ for not coming. They are currently out on tour."

Frankly, Atem hadn't even spared a thought for them. Stars and a swishing little red skirt had filled his brain. Her leggings made the dress modest, but he still got a good look at the shape of her thighs, and it had been mesmerizing.

Their producer introduced them to his wife, Kisara, who gave a shy, soft smile as she shook their hands. Her palms were icy, but soft and firm.

"Thank you so much for making this a family friendly affair," she said, turning her eyes to Tea. "I heard it's your influence I have to thank. Mokuba was beyond ecstatic."

Mokuba's gaze, which had been scouring Tea with uncanny intensity, dropped down to his shoes.

Tea held out her hand to him all the same. "It's very nice to meet you, Mokuba. I have a few siblings around your age."

He looked up in surprise. "A few?"

"Well, yeah. I'm guessing you're about eight or nine, right? I have two sisters who are 7 and 8 and then a brother that's 10."

His eyes widened. "How old are you?"

"Eighteen. I was the high school baby, first of the lot. If I ever get the chance to, would you like me to introduce you to them?"

Mokuba looked at Seto, and Atem couldn't help but smile at the hint of longing on his face. It couldn't be all that fun being the son of a protective multi-billionaire who, as a general rule, only mingled strictly for business and never mentioned his family, let alone talk about play dates.

Atem didn't miss the small, warm smile on Kisara's face either.

Seto, however, looked at Tea.

"If they're anything like you," he said, words betraying his casual tone. "Then I'd be comfortable with that. Quite comfortable. Perhaps it would give you a chance to see a future in the music industry that isn't just debauchery and spectacle. There are families that don't make the news, probably since they're too normal for interest."

They made small talk for a bit, which probably would have made the record for the longest time Seto Kaiba went without saying something snide, sarcastic, or egotistical. Atem couldn't believe the side of his producer he was seeing. It was like he was a whole other person, demurring to his wife and son almost readily and expressing nothing other than contentment. Once more, Tea was bringing out the warmth in others he thought never to see.

Kisara didn't let them go until she had a promise of dinner, to which Seto frowned to, but said nothing. Mokuba begged Tea to arrange bringing her siblings, and then they were back out once more, spinning and laughing in the lights.

The party ended in their thank you speeches, after which the three of them tottered off to the apartment, arms slung over each other shoulders and laughing deliriously at their own exhaustion and well being. His throat itched and burned with thirst. He longed to try a sip of the congratulatory wine the manager of their recording studio had sent, but didn't want to voice it in front of Tea. She was so happy as it was.

And she'd let him touch her more than she ever had that night. His system buzzed from the contact, like a natural high.

Joey's door came first, and he gave a fair amount of suggestive wiggling and winking before letting Atem go to walk Tea upstairs and home.

"Don't pay any mind to him," Atem said. He had brought down his arm to hold her hand in his. Their fingers twined together as though formed just for that.

"I think he's hilarious. Seriously, the inappropriateness doesn't even faze me. If anything, it reminds me of my family. Honestly, I should buy them all air filters for Christmas and tell them to put it over their heads."

He laughed at that. Everything came so easily with her. He could almost see himself as a partially made jigsaw puzzle sliding into place with her grooves to become whole.

At her door, blinded by the starlight within him, he didn't give her time to get her key in. He just pressed her up against it and pressed his hot mouth to hers. Vanilla and fruit punch slid across his tongue. Every groove of her breasts and stomach met so well to his, the jigsaw pieces made a reality.

High, high, high as a kite on her taste, her smell, and the memory of her dancing with head flung back to laugh at the heavens brought him back to gasp the desperate want within him.

"Come back with me. Back to my apartment. Be with me." He breathed into her, not quite kissing, but still touching enough to share the same air. "Let me pleasure you."

When she didn't stiffen, but melted against him till he knew he was the only thing keeping her up, the secret want burst to the surface with eager heat and he kissed her again. So she had such passions as well, virgin standards or not. He didn't know why it should surprise him, she was still human after all, but it all the more verified how she had been made for him.

Then her hands slipped up between their stomachs and pushed him away.

"Please don't," she said, breathless. Her eyes shone with something other than excitement.

Instantly he felt guilty and drew away.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't—I already know…" he bit his lip, fighting to not at least try to convince her to be with him for just that one night, or for any night in the future.

Because he had noticed how her knees trembled and pinched together, and how the hands clutching each other before her had turned purple.

"Please don't…don't push me…" her voice cracked.

Alarm flooded in. He suddenly wondered if this is what it felt like for angels to be cast out of heaven. One second he was hot with happiness and passion, the next he was cold and aching and raw.

"Tea, I'm sorry, I just—I love you. I can't help but want to be with you, you're the most—the most beautiful and amazing person ever."

When she responded with a smile, he could tell she hadn't taken a single one of his weak, cheesy words, true or not. That, perhaps, hurt more than the fact he had hurt her.

"Good night, Atem."

Back in his apartment, he all but threw himself at the fancy red wine, half needing to bash out the horrible dread ruining the perfect night, and half needing to punish himself.

Thankfully, they had the entire next day off, as he didn't get up until sometime around noon, when a knock at his door woke him from where he had collapsed against his sofa the night before in his party clothes. Groaning, head pounding, he wobbled to the door without a thought and opened it with a hand to his face.

Just to see Tea, holding what looked like to be some breakfast confectionary loaded up with whip cream and strawberries.

He didn't register why she just stared at him until he smelled the alcohol off his shirt and felt the bile rising in his throat. There was no way she'd miss it with her level of intuition.

"I made you breakfast," she said quietly, breaking the awkward silence. "To apologize for being so…abrupt last night."

He landed his forehead on the doorframe and let out a little moan. "Don't. It's my fault. I was a thoughtless, horny imbecile. You were the one who was hurt."

He could feel her eyes on him, but he didn't look up. He didn't have to see her face to feel her discomfort and…disappointment.

"Well, I hope you like it." She held out the plate. "When you're…ready for the day to start, I thought we could play music or…something…maybe."

He took the plate, if for anything other than wanting to eat it. It was beautifully made and looked plenty delicious, but all his stomach wanted was a bottle of Pepto-Bismol and a long hot shower.

"What is this?"

"Fruit crepes," she said. "With homemade whipped cream and…stuff."

"You made this?"

"I use to make them all the time for my siblings. My sisters and I figured it out…" she took a step back. "Sorry for waking you up. See you later."

And before his heavy, pounding, angry head could come up with anything else to help him out of the dog house, she was down the hall and flying down the stairs.

Inside, he licked a fingertip of whip cream. The sweetness combined with the tart of strawberries made his mouth water, despite his disgruntled stomach.

And just like that, he knew.

She was too good for him.


	28. A Love for Heaven

Chapter 28

They moved on as though nothing had happened. Friday brought with it the recording of their perfected songs which were to be in the next album, headed through marketing by _Minarets._ It was the high all over again, and the studio opened bottles of champagne at the end of the day, along with a green bottle of non-alcoholic, sparkling apple juice for Tea. Seto Kaiba had sent along a basket of rich kid goodies to snack on and drink as they worked, all of which included nothing with tea or alcohol or even caffeine, for that matter ("Man must have done his Mormon research," said Joey rather tongue in cheek).

Tea appreciated all of it with wide smiles and a serving of her happy, peppy side.

Atem got himself a congratulatory present that night online, and on Saturday evening he got it in the mail: a high-end laser pointer, used by astrology professors to point out constellations to their students. He'd only heard of these and seen it in action on a video, so he could hardly contain himself when he went up to Tea's room and convinced her to come with him on a excursion into the dying day.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"To test out my new laser on some stars, like I said."

She had to jog to keep up with him. "But we're in the middle of the city, you can't see any stars."

"Then we'll find somewhere where we can," he said. "It's an adventure!"

So they set out on the interstate in the best direction out of town they could guess. They stopped at a hole in the wall Mexican grocery outlet for snacks and found the most amazing salsa and weird, mango flavored sodas that Tea absolutely loved, and he thought he could love it too, probably because he managed to make her laugh mid-swallow and it squirted all over his dashboard. Priceless.

"It buurrrnss!"

"Ha HA! Nothing burns like carbonation!"

"Then you drink it and I'll bust a new one. Come on!"

"A new one? What kind of slang is that?"

"Just drink it!"

"You're not going to make me laugh while I drink. I deny you."

"Challenge accepted, pharaoh."

He rolled his eyes. "Don't you go calling me that too."

"Oh? Egyptian endearments don't do it for you? Is that too racist?" she grinned widely at him, almost devilishly, which made her look unbearably cute.

"Wait, wait, drinking…drinking…" he took a swig of the mango soda, one hand on the wheel.

She flipped her hands in the air. "Poo!"

He choked. It almost went up. The back of his sinuses even burned.

And then they were both laughing, because they were adults, but poo was still funny.

Long after the sun had set, around ten, the last of the suburbs finally fell away and the freeway went down to two lanes. Scrubby hills rose about them, speckled with sagebrush and squat bushes and pine.

"Now we have to find somewhere without trees," he said before nibbling a chip. His lips were starting to sting from too much salt.

"What you should be worried about," she put her feet up on the mango speckled dashboard. "Is the wendigo."

"The what?"

Another adorably devilish smile. She wriggled her fingers in front of her in mock ghostliness. "A monster from Indian legend that started out as a man, but was stricken with sickly, insatiable hunger after tasting human flesh. It roams with jaws like a wolf and limbs like…like those boney monster things you see with bad nail jobs and—and yeah!"

He chuckled. "Your scary storytelling needs some work. Boney monster things?"

She dropped her hands and her smile turned back to normal, which was a pity…or blessing. She couldn't pull off evil even if she wanted to, but it still made him happy to imagine her trying.

"Yeah, well, when we get out there I'm going to be wendigoing in your ear the entire way."

"Yes, and I will cling to your leg like a frightened she-man and sleep with a gun."

"Excuse me? Your sarcasm is quite disrespectful."

"Oh, I apologize." But he smirked nonetheless. He spotted a turnoff onto a dirt road up ahead and decided to take a chance , slowed, and turned onto it. Rocks popped beneath the tires, shaking up the quiet hum of asphalt that had been the past few hours. Had it really only been that long?

It didn't take too long until Atem found the trees opening up to a wide, open hillside, bare to the sky and hemmed in by a distant woodlot. Grinning, he pulled off the road and against the fence, turned off the car, and let his eyes adjust to the night light. A wave of nostalgia came over him as the spread of the Milky Way came into view.

Pulling out a blanket from the back, he stepped out, followed by Tea. Dry, autumn grass crunched underfoot and scratched against the denim of their pants. Once he was satisfied with his distance, he threw open the blanket and sprawled out on it with his laser. Tea stood at his head, hesitant.

"Well?" he asked, flicking his laser experimentally at the sky. The reviews had been right. It really did look as though it reached up all the way to the stars itself.

After an extra moment of hesitation, she came round and laid out besides him, keeping just far enough that only their elbows would brush. Too excited to think about it, he flashed his new power laser at the first constellation he laid eyes on.

"You see this sort of 'V' shape?" The green line traced the stars perfectly. Man, what his grandfather would give for one of these. He planned to buy him one the moment he got back.

"That laser is super cool. Yeah, I see it."

"That's Andromeda. She was the princess that got strapped to a sea rock as a sacrifice to the sea monster of Poseidon."

"Eh? What kind of messed up ritual was that?"

"Not a ritual. Her mother, the queen of that particular island, bragged she was prettier than the sea nymphs, and they complained to Poseidon, who in turn sent the monster to destroy her land. An oracle told them that, in order to save their country, they had to sacrifice their daughter Andromeda."

Out of the corner of his eye he caught Tea's applaud glance. "And these stories are what people enjoy telling themselves?"

He grinned and let out a short breath of mirth. "No, this is only a piece of the story of the hero Perseus, who swooped down, wrestled the monster—which happened to be a shape shifter—and rescued the princess." He swooped the laser up and around. "I don't see him, but he's usually up there too. I think he's a winter constellation. But if you turn your head a little—she's upside down, you see. Her head is this star, right here, Alpheratz."

"Wow, you're right. It's so cool you know the name of that star. It's beautiful. Maybe I'll name one of my kids that one day."

He rolled his head to shoot her a raised eyebrow. "Alpheratz? Really? That's cruel. One little slip and it's Alcatraz. You know, the prison?"

"Yes, I know, and it would be a middle name…maybe."

He snorted and rolled back to find his next constellation. "If we move from Andromeda, not so far from her is Delphinius, a new personal favorite of mine."

"New? I thought you haven't stargazed for at least a few years."

Which pained him to think about. What had he been doing all this time? "It's the constellation the freckles on your nose make."

She let out a surprised peel of laughter. "My nose constellation? Gracious, I hope Delphinius doesn't have a story of sinus infections."

"On the contrary," he said in his best regal voice, which he had practiced whenever Joey or Bakura were being extra annoying with his pharaoh nickname. "Delphinius is a dolphin sent by Poseidon to find a rather flighty beauty he had set his eye on. He had sent out several searchers, mind you, but it was Delphinius that managed to convince her to accept his wooing. In gratitude, Poseidon set his image in the stars."

She made a rather unladylike noise. "Well, dang, can't keep the horn dog waiting."

Atem shrugged, grinning. "The Greek Gods didn't have much better to do, and I guess if you see the whole array before you all the time…"

"Is there a story up there that doesn't involve pervy gods?"

"Sure. Right next to Delphinius, sharing Alpheratz with Andromena, is Pegasus. You know him, right?"

"Loyal companion of Hercules?"

He rolled his chin in dismay. "Disney is hardly accurate, otherwise _Hercules_ would have been rated R."

"Well stop being so high and mighty and tell me the real story already. Of Pegasus, that is. I got a bad feeling about Hercules."

"And you're feeling would be right. He's a rather tragic hero." Atem traced out the wings and front legs of the flying horse. "Pegasus actually has to do with Perseus's story. When Perseus defeated Medusa, her blood fell into the sea and from the foam Pegasus was born. He goes on to befriend another hero with some weird B name I can never remember and the idiot convinces Pegasus to try and bear him up to Olympus. Zeus got pissed by his impertinence and sent some divine gadfly to bite Pegasus's rear, bucking off the idiot to his death. But since Pegasus ended making it up to Olympus, he became a companion of the gods and is included in the constellations."

"So, the Greek figured the night sky was just the gods' wall of fame?"

"More or less."

"Geeze, no wonder they got bored and started chasing women."

"What else would they do? Even parties and Earth managing can get boring."

She flung her arms up towards the stars, like missiles. "How about helping out people? Or having babies with the wives they already have? Or, I don't know, creating a buttload of other worlds for their buttload of said babies?"

He laughed hard, half because the way she had essentially said 'buttload of babies' and half because hearing about babies from the girl he dreamed of, maybe, one day, having them with, startled him.

"Come on, there's more to do in life than make babies, and isn't that what they were doing?"

"Not with their wives," she said, pouting till her upper lip curled to her button nose, where Delphinius arched. "That's not romantic at all. Honestly, what's so bad about just keeping it to one girl?"

He chose his words carefully. "Well, Joey says he never wants to settle down because the idea of having sex with only one girl for the rest of his life sounds like hell. He likes to taste the buffet." Had he thought that too at some point? No, he could understand Joey's view, but that didn't mean he was completely blind to the tastelessness of it, or the loneliness. Atem's romance bone was a bit more tuned than Joey's. Not that Atem didn't like the idea of having copious amounts of beautiful women.

She made a low grunt of disgust and said no more.

So he took the chance to point out more constellations, turning out from Delphinius and Pegasus. The stars crossed and pointed to one another, framing smaller clusters and clouds of luminescence. He found himself tracing the old paths that connected all the old stories that his grandfather had taken him on, from god to hero to monster to wondrous creatures and unreachable virgins. Even as he named off the eternal, divine virgins, such as Artemis and Athena (though she was rumored to lose said virginity in lesser known myths), a part of his thoughts quietly traced out Tea among them, dancing with her head thrown back and her hair passing her long lashes in a veil of Milky Way.

When his voice started to crack and he had yawned more times than he could count, he rolled onto his side and watched her drowsy, half closed eyes skip from one star to the next.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked, making a pillow out of his arm. She had pulled the coat over her legs to protect them from the chill and he was just thinking of doing the same. Their coats only protected their upper halves, after all.

"Do you really want to know?"

"I asked, didn't I?"

She glanced at him, yawned, then looked back to the sky, hesitance in the way she shifted her jaw and frowned.

"You won't make fun of me, right?"

He gave a snuff of disbelief. "Seriously?"

"It's something I've never told anyone—crap, now that I've said that—stop, I'm…just don't make fun of it, okay? It's a really…special memory."

He waited, heart speeding up a notch. He couldn't remember a time when he had wanted to know something so much. Her saying she had never told anyone just made it worse.

"When I was maybe two or three," she said slowly, her gaze still enough that he could make out the reflection of the stars in them. "My mom took me up to this room in the visitors center at the Salt Lake Temple. I remember the walkway was slanted and twisted up, and there were stars painted on the wall just like this sky, and it made me excited because of how pretty they were. At the top the stars spread out and over, up and up, around this big, white statue of Christ—the Christus. You know, the one with his arms open with the mark of the nails on his palms?"

"Not really…" he said with real regret, if only because it broke him from the imaginings of the story.

"Well…it was Christ, holding his arms out to the people at his feet. And, well," she gave an awkward laugh. "I thought I was actually seeing Jesus. I became so…euphorically happy, because I could—I could somehow remember His love, what it felt like, like I was meeting my best friend, like I _knew_ him, but not in like…like words, because I remember recalling all the things my mom and others had told me about Him, about how He loved me, but I didn't need to remember that because I just knew, and I felt like…like I had somehow gotten back to Him."

A somewhat stunned silence fell between them, filled with the sound of a light breeze brushing through the trees and a small spattering of crickets.

Tea gave a forced, little laugh. "Weird, huh? A part of me wonders if my brain is just making up stuff, but I don't see why it would, I mean…I remember begging my mom to take me back after we left and throwing a big fit a few days later, because I remember, rather vividly, that feeling of frustration that she didn't understand, because how couldn't she? Didn't she want to go back too?"

"Yeah. Weird." Wait, wrong thing to say, that sounded rude—albeit truthful. "I mean, that does sound nice, I guess. To feel loved. And the fact that you remember something from that far back, that's cool. The oldest memory I have is when I was five and I fell on my face in a gutter full of slimy mud and old slushie juice."

"Yeah…" How tiny it sounded was not encouraging, though it didn't sound like he had offended her, especially when she added, "Do you remember what flavor of slushie?" in a tone that asked to be amused.

"Blueberry, I think. Never asked for a slushie again, though."

They lay there in comfortable silence for a bit until Tea stretched, jostling Atem from a light doze.

"We better head home."

He moaned. "That's hours away. How about this, I'll sleep out here and you can sleep in the car."

"How about no. I'll stay up all night thinking you were freezing to death in your sleep, like Jack in _Titanic_."

"Then you drive," he whined, flipping onto his stomach to mash his face into the blanket. Dry grass crunched with him.

"Are you sure about that? I don't have driver's insurance or anything."

He didn't answer right away, but sighed and heaved his head up. "If I drive, we're dying. End of story."

"Dang, you don't do late nights?"

He pulled out his phone and flashed it at her. "Early morning. I don't do early mornings."

"Alright, alright. Get in. I'll get a Mountain Dew or something to keep me up."

He snorted as he pushed himself to his feet and wrapped up the blanket. "If a Mountain Dew is powerful enough for you, a cup of coffee would kill you."

"Good thing I don't plan on drinking coffee in the future then."

It wasn't until the pop of rocks had fallen away and the sound of the asphalt had returned that he registered the ache in his chest. The moment he noticed it, the anxious pain was all he could focus on, and it jarred him from the edge of sleep. Why did the mention of coffee do this? No, it had started before that, when she was talking about her Jesus moment as a toddler.


	29. Please, Be Mine

Chapter 29

When he lazily took a gel pen to her arm and started drawing lines between her freckles a few days later, she just smiled and continued on with the book she was reading on her smartphone. They had a meeting at a high end talk show in Hollywood, and they all had found ways to eat up the hours of travel. Mai would probably pull her aside for a good arm scrubbing, but he didn't care. That's why he had a gel pen. Stuff would wash right off. Though permanent would be a treat.

"Have you ever thought of getting a tattoo?" he asked as he traced out Orion.

"Nope. Against my religion."

His straight line jerked.

Bakura looked up from whatever he'd been doing on his phone.

"Is there anything you can do?" Bakura asked.

Joey had his headphones in and had nothing to add.

Tea gave Bakura a droll look.

"Yep. I can't do anything at all except sing, eat, and poop."

"Okay, let me phrase it differently: what are all the things you can't do?"

She sighed and leaned back, forcing Atem to adjust to finish Orion's legs, which bent about her forearm.

"There's the stuff you know, then no tattoos, no piercings besides one pair in the ears for girls, no dyeing your hair freaky colors and gelling it into a Mohawk, no—"

"God, stop, I get it." He pulled out his big white headphones, which he never went without on a trip.

"I was almost done," she said.

"And what were you going to say next? That you can't wear red shoes with too thin heels because the devil wears Prada?"

"Ha ha. No. No porn shirts, like shirts with logos on them that support porn or devilish practices and stuff."

"Oh, the humanity. Guess I'll have to send back that SKIN t-shirt I ordered for your birthday."

"When is your birthday?" Atem asked, eager to end the conversation.

"December first," she said, accepting his invitation gladly.

He held up her hand to see if the few freckles there could be connected to anything. "That's only two months away. Want to do anything?"

Before she could answer, Bakura said, "I'll spike your drink so you'll actually enjoy it, yeah?"

Her muscles beneath his fingertips tensed, and her fingers twitched. He didn't need her to say anything.

Clicking his pen closed, he turned on the pianist.

"That was too far."

Bakura didn't respond. He either had the music on and couldn't hear him, or was making a good show of pretending to.

Atem rolled his eyes and prepared to toss the pen, but Tea stopped him.

"I'm fine," she said. "Seriously, he doesn't bother me."

He frowned, knowing that wasn't the truth and that one of his biggest regrets had been that he hadn't protected her, but seeing she wanted to avoid the drama more, he commandeered her lap and decided a nice, vanilla scented nap was in order.

Next thing he knew he was being shaken awake, hustled from the car, and set up before a mirror lined with lightbulbs as Otaga dove in to his thick hair. He just blinked blearily at himself and let his mind wander to how he could go about getting a drink after this.

"So, Tea, what's it like to go from nothing to dating the star of _Millenial Sands_? Besides becoming a member of the band yourself, of course."

Atem straightened. The question had blasted out on the speakers somewhere behind him in the darkness, which he now recognized as the back of the screen set.

"Um, I-I wouldn't say it's—I didn't really know Atem before I joined the band. I like alternative music fine enough, but when I hear a song I like I don't really pay attention to the artist, because they can—I don't know, maybe I'm ADD? Boy, that sounds bad."

But the host was laughing in good nature. "Not at all! Just know there's some Atem fans writhing and grinding their teeth. Speaking of which, this upshot in the charts is the quickest in music history, and I don't think it's just a coincidence that it happened right after you joined. So, level with me, just how much of _Minarets_ did you write?"

"Just some of the guitar bits here and there. Nothing much. It was all Atem—and Joey and Bakura, of course."

"Uh huh." The host didn't sound like he believed her. "Guess I'm going to have to ask them to get the truth, eh?"

"That's your queue." Otaga yanked him up from the chair, as though he were a child incapable of walking in the right direction. "Off you go."

"So, without further ado, let's welcome the boys on stage, shall we?"

The last two words were drowned in cheers. Stage hands shuffled him forward towards the light. Blood rushed down to a foot he hadn't noticed was numb and he stumbled. Joey seemed to magically appear to catch him. Bakura kicked the back of his shoes and stalked on ahead onto the dark, polished floor and into the lights.

The first thing he saw was Tea wearing the plaid little skirt and leggings Mai had picked out for her this morning, along with the red headband topped with a much more modest bow. She smiled at him, just for him, with her hands pinched between her legs.

His chest swelled and he started talking before any of them had sat down. His voice, magnified ten times, startled him and he reached to his ear to feel a small Bluetooth microphone taped to the side of his face and half hidden in his hair.

"She's lying," he said.

The audience, hidden by the stage lights, chortled.

"How so?" asked the clean cut, middle-aged talk show host. He was one of those men who aged well, and Atem could smell his cologne from across the stage.

Atem opened his mouth just to have Bakura break him off by yanking him down to the couch by one of his jean back pockets.

"Atem played a love song for her and she remembered it," said Bakura.

Joey plopped down so heavily the couch moved. "Wrong song, white ass. He's talking about _Minarets_."

But the crowd had already swelled into catcalls and whistles, thrown into a flurry at the mention of the real deal.

Tea ducked her head down, but smiled sheepishly.

"I wrote the lyrics to _Minarets_ after meeting Tea," admitted Atem. "But I don't think I was in love with her then, or I didn't recognize it at least."

"Wow, we got to the juicy bits fast," said the host, laughing as some girls squealed.

"Tell us about the other song!" someone shouted.

Atem just raised his eyebrow into the darkness. He was rewarded by more shouts for the new song and more squealing.

"Better oblige them," said Bakura, not bothering to hide his disgust.

"Aw, look at that face," said the talkshow host, pointing at Tea, who had turned bright pink.

"Do you not want me to?" Atem asked her.

She popped one of her captured hands out to flap it at him and squeak, "They're going to hear it anyways in the next album."

"You did help me with _Minarets_ more than you admit, though."

"Does Tea's rumored religious affinity have anything to do with the inspiration of the song?" asked the host.

"Yes," said Bakura.

Atem slapped his knee. "No."

"Yes," said Joey.

Atem threw his hands up. "I can't win."

The crowd laughed, then prickled with calls for the next song.

"I would much rather we played it for you than just talked about it," said Tea self-consciously. "I'm a bit more comfortable with music than…talking."

Which was a shame, Atem thought, as it were her words that had captured him first, and her music second.

"Well, we were going to save that for last…"

All of them straightened. No one had told him they were performing. But, then, he had been rather distracted of late. But even as he searched out his bandmates eyes, a wall slid from the otherside of the set, revealing none other than his favorite, goldenwood cello, Tea's guitar, Bakura's set of keyboards, and the stealpan hang drum and marimba Joey had chosen for the song.

Smiling, Atem pointed at them. "That's breaking and entering."

"They were in our practice studio," said Bakura, dull and cool as ever. He looked like he had known, the sucker.

"Still, seriously, who did that?"

"Does it matter? Playing beats answering twenty questions any day, come on!"

"Wait, Joey!" Too late. There he went, all but skipping to the little stage, his feet peppered with the audience's amusement.

"Well, this is all wonderfully unrehearsed," said Bakura, pushing to his feet. He looked at the talk show host, who was trained to look in control no matter how off guard he was. "We really are professionals."

"No, no, be my guest. We did ask for live. We all want to see the real you, and that's a bit more difficult if it's all rehearsed. Besides," he smiled at Tea, who looked borderline frantic. "Maybe it will help Tea feel more at ease with showing her true self too."

She gave the talk show host a weak little smile, but didn't get up until Atem came to her side and offered his hand. The fingers that twined in his were cold and sweaty.

He put a hand to the mic on his cheek. "Everything's going to be fine," he whispered.

She just nodded and followed him to the stage.

While the band took a few seconds to accustom themselves to the instruments, the talk show host read a few facts about the band to the crowd, including when their next album was to be published and some remarks given by various critics hired to help promote it.

"I've also been told by a very reliable source that Tea's a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, the same church that a certain presidential candidate was a part of, which caused quite a few waves. So, Tea, is it true you can't drink coffee or tea?"

"Yep," she said without missing a beat. "No alcohol or tobacco either."

"Or tattoos or piercings or Mohawks," said Bakura all too seriously. "Mohawks are a call to the devil to molest your mind."

Tea's face went from light pink to all out red. "That is not true."

"What? You said no Mohawks."

The talk show host laughed in good nature. "I think what she means is 'no extreme hairstyles.'" He picked up a piece of paper from the desk. "Fact, the Mormons are awfully gung ho about telling you everything about their religion. So much so that I think I nearly called down the missionaries when I looked them up on their site. Really friendly folk, they are. I've even found that their nearly always the first on the scene to a natural disaster, even before the red cross."

"Well, it's one of our core beliefs to serve our fellow man as Christ would," said Tea, whose face had manage to cool. "I'm good here, you ready guys?"

Bakura and Joey checked off. Atem was the last to give her the thumbs up, as he wanted to remember the feel of the strings against his fingertips.

When the crowd finally hushed, he let out a breath into the microphone, bracing himself.

And then he suddenly realized he didn't want to do this. He didn't want to play this song for all these faceless people. He had barely been able to play it for the recording studio, and only because Bakura and Joey had more or less dragged him along.

But he couldn't back out now. Not without causing a scene.

The tip of his bow trembled as he set the base on the A string and pulled. After a tremulous triplet, Joey came in with the soft, ethereal taps of the steel hang drum.

Atem closed his eyes, willing his fluttering heart to let the words go without a fight, and breathed.

" _I know I stand upon the cliff edge_

 _watching stars play about your feet._

 _If only I could turn away,_

 _I couldn't. I wouldn't._

 _For Calypso gifts her words to you_

 _and I'm a homeless Odysseus._

 _Oceans wave across your nose_

 _and your wishes twine about us."_

He steadied himself, finding his breathing constricted and his head spinning. With a quick suck of breath, he barely came in time for the chorus with Bakura's pittering keyboard.

But the first word of the chorus was meant to be soft, pleading, and full of wonder, so his weak breathing support actually helped.

" _Be mine._

 _I swear I'll try to make it._

 _But I don't know if you'll take it._

 _Be mine._

 _I don't care if I'm not good enough,_

 _You're the one I've dreamed of."_

The crowd rose in a great rush of ecstatic noise, nearly drowning over the short instrumental intermission. The song, in and of itself, wasn't very loud. There was only a single chord played at a time, and Joey had chosen rather delicate percussion. Even Bakura had been able to catch on to the small, earnest tone of Atem's cello in his accompianant.

Tea's guitar strummed the underlining chord like an afterthought. A dreamy one, that ran alongside his cello.

" _Maybe I won't get up_

 _once my ship has crashed and fallen_

 _upon the blades which are your shores_

 _to protect and mislead._

 _But I've seen you off my prow,_

 _seen you lone and white within the glow,_

 _and can't stand to see you_

 _all alone._

 _So, please, be mine._

 _I swear I'll try to make it._

 _But I don't know if you'll take it._

 _Be mine._

 _I don't care if I'm not good enough,_

 _You're the one I've dreamed of."_

As was with the style of the genre they played, the music picked up here, but he suddenly found himself staring up at the lights, eyes clouding with pain.

He took it back. He didn't want to play this song. He couldn't play it. This was a horrible idea, and he was going to hunt down whoever secretly brought their instruments along and demand why they hadn't asked him. He was going to call Kaiba himself and beg him to take down the song, to never let it see the light of day.

And then the cue for the last song hit him, dragging the last verse out of him like a wail, and he clenched his eyes against the suddenly too bright light.

" _Why'd you have to fall from heaven?_

 _Why upon the sea I roam?_

 _Who am I to fight the gods_

 _who planted your roots against me?_

 _Fall or rise,_

 _I want you. I breathe you._

 _Your touch banishes Poseidon,_

 _and calms the storm that is me._

 _Be Mine!_

 _I swear I'll try to make it._

 _But I don't know if you'll take it._

 _Be mine._

 _I'm going to be good enough,_

 _Because you're the one I dream of."_

He somehow choked out the ending, all too aware of how vulnerable and raw he had become for all those watching strangers. He swore the floor attempted to spin, and black prickled his vision with little bursts of color. His fingers and bow were moving of their own record, following practiced habit, though his awareness rocked with his wavering vibrato.

With one last plea that was supposed to be a cry of determination of "Be Mine," his cello fell quite and Joey and Tea lead them to the ending. He slapped his hand over the mic on his face, praying he could hide his frantic gasping. He felt violated. Horridly bare before people who cared nothing for the frantic fear he'd kept stuffed away, even from himself.

Thankfully, the loud whooshing applause covered up any noise that could have made it to the speakers.

A cool hand dropped on his shoulder. Joey's hand. The percussionist tore off his microphone.

"You going to be okay, Atem?"

Air. He needed air.

"I'm done," he gasped. "I want out."

"What?"

He put aside his cello and pushed up and past Joey towards the edge of the stage.

"Atem? Atem!?"

This was humiliating. Why was he reacting so strongly? Why was his head spinning over nothing? And why did it have to happen now of all places?

They heard it. They would know.

Stage hands reached for him like frantic chickens as he stumbled around the set and into blessed darkness. He pushed them aside, muttering words he didn't hear. He wanted to go home. He didn't want to be here anymore.

A water bottle was shoved into his hand. He recognized the expensive, rhinestone manicure.

"You need to get back out there or people are going to think the worst of her," Mai hissed beneath her breath. "You need to get under control and back out there, for her. She doesn't know what they're capable of."

He didn't bother telling Mai that they were just people, but twisted off the cap and threw back the water. The rush of cool did help snap back his awareness. He took a breath, then finished the rest.

"Tell them you had something in your throat," said Mai. "Tell them anything."

"I'm going."

And so he did, with his sexy stage smile in place and a casual wave to his staring bandmates.

"Sorry, getting a cold," he told the concerned host, even managing a pretty loud sniff. "Can't tell you how much mucous I just coughed up, it's disgusting."

Trails of laughter eased him back onto the couch and staring into the too-perfect face of the TV host. He didn't recall the questions he answered, and only hints of Joey and Bakura's sidelong glances. He was too busy fighting to not stare at Tea's face, which shone out in hypercolor and watched him with too naked, too exposed worry.

But later, he realized, it wasn't worry he had seen. But empathy.


	30. The Beginning of Secrets

Chapter 30

Worn from the day of traveling and talking and interviews, Atem and Tea once more sought solace together in his music room, though she didn't pick up an instrument as he took up his cello. She curled up on his bean bag, listening in quiet as he lazily swung back and forth between strings, dreaming in order to calm himself. He had just stopped to stretch his fingers when he realized her breathing had evened out and her eyes hadn't opened for the last ten minutes. Smiling, he took a blanket from off his couch and tucked it around her. Fall was now in full swing, after all. Winter on the way.

As his hands passed over her hair, he found himself once more caught up in her. Everything about her: the soft hair, the freckles, how she had made breakfast for him every morning they had to get up early, her vanilla scent as he used her lap for a pillow, the way her eyes had reflected the stars; the way she always seemed to see right through him as easily as stating the color of his hair.

The song he had sung that morning ran through him with a return of all the raw, gaping need and fear and the heat rose up in him in a new, aching need for comfort. He leaned down with a watering mouth to kiss her lips. The heat craved to engulf her, to smoother her, and bury in deep into her heat and softness. He wanted her close, so close there would be nothing left to stop his soul from touching hers. He wanted her tangled there, trapped there, where she could never abandon him to face the world without her.

When her lips drowsily flowered about his own, he couldn't help but groan. He had always stopped here; pulled away before the heat grew heavy and settled low into his gut. He knew better.

But he didn't. The need was crying and insistent. He eased her sleepy lips apart and tilted his open mouth above hers, breathing her deep to the burning within. His fidgeting hands slithered beneath the blanket and her, his palms memorizing each bump and curve of her shoulder blades and spine through her shirt. His fingertips paused at the smooth line of her bra strap.

He closed her mouth with his in one kiss, just to open it again with another. And another. By the time he slipped his tongue in he had pressed himself against her and begun to shake. The heat was lower and heavier than ever. She made a surprised little mewl that just excited him more and his hands slipped back down and under her shirt.

And then the sleepy, soft little body beneath him was suddenly quite awake.

He jerked his hands out as she shoved him back.

"Stop," she gasped, and her swollen, red lips and heavy lidded eyes made him want to wave off those delicate hands and press himself down on her completely. He had felt her resistance. He could feel how easily it would be to persuade her otherwise; a caress here, a nip there. What he wouldn't do to discover her secret, sensitive spots.

He mentally slapped himself.

"Too far?" Of course it was. His now too tight pants were more than enough to tell him that. "Sorry, of course, I don't—I'm sorry. Maybe you should head home now."

 _No. No, don't leave. Don't look at me like that_.

"Yeah. Sorry, I shouldn't have fallen asleep like that." Her hands were shaking as she pushed off the blanket and rolled off the bean bag. She tottered a bit as the blood rushed to her head and he jumped up to catch her, then regretted it as he realized he had revealed to her just how far he had gone by standing up. Her eyes flashed to it before he could crouch back down, hotter than ever. Maybe she didn't know—

"Good night!" she squeaked.

Nope…she knew.

And then she all but fled his house.

Atem slapped his face into the bean bag with a closed mouth scream.

His arousal didn't leave. The lingering smell of her vanilla musk didn't help, and with a growl he went to take a very cold shower. But even as he stepped out, it returned, spinning his head with the memory of his desire to engulf her and bring her so close they'd never be apart again. He wanted that. He wanted her with him when it grew dark, when the night crept in and the monsters of his mind ran his throat dry and achy. But more than ever, he just wanted _her._

But he couldn't let these feelings stay. Not only would he never get to sleep, but she wasn't about to give him any of that any time soon, and he wasn't about to ask.

So, uncomfortable, frustrated, embarrassed, and smothering the desire to call Tea and beg, he flopped onto his bed, flipped open the browser in his phone, and looked up the only cure he knew of. Even as he picked something leggy and freckled, he felt disgusted with himself. When was the last time he had needed to look up porn just to get his stupid hormones to shut up? Freshman year, maybe? Even then real women had been more appealing, by far.

But he couldn't allow himself these urges with Tea. He couldn't scare her off.

And he couldn't ask her to marry him. Not yet. But…maybe…

But once he had exhausted himself out of the pressure of his want, he couldn't bring himself to play upon the sudden urge to look up rings. A new thirst had taken him, and his guilt wouldn't allow him to consider having her with alcohol on the breath and no attempt to stop it.

The sweet rum swept him off into its waiting arms, which were not loving or freckled, but sticky in an insistent, seductive way, just like the porn stars he had fantasized with on his phone.

And his dreams were far too kind.


	31. The Curse of Observation

Chapter 31

Weeks passed in relative bliss. He didn't press her, and she seemed grateful, even though he could swear he smelled desire off of her in the quiet moments when no one else was around. He told himself it was the porn getting to him, because she didn't try to touch him provocatively. Though on the edges of her kisses he still found himself caught in temptation.

But mostly he was saved by those moments of music in his apartment. They had moved away from taking turns playing and it had become a wordless span of time where they just played. She had learned his style so well she could follow him with improvised harmony.

"It's really simple. I just have to remember the keys you like," she said.

So he tried to shake her up by playing some particularly sharp keys and got a playful kick in the leg for that.

But humming with his cello, her flute, cello, or piano playing alongside him like the ocean currents to the fish, was heaven. In those moments he could care less the taste of alcohol or the temptation of her vanilla musk. He saw her, sweet, cautious, innocent, yet intense and loyal.

When they grew too tired to play and she would leave for the night, his chest would physically ache as though her departure scooped out his lungs and heart. It was ridiculous to be so affected, he knew, especially since she just lived on the next floor. But the night always brought with it the whispers, the giants on the horizon, and the inevitable succumb to a drink and his phone, yet the pictures didn't fill the hollow space where the music once was.

She stopped coming in the mornings with breakfast after finding him hung over again. But she would drop by at lunch, so he did his part to meet her half way and made sure to be clean and perfectly put together by noon. He did manage to keep sober on nights they had early mornings, and he thanked her for that. The giants on the horizon were large, the ones that whispered about Egypt and Rebecca and his mother, but he'd text her into the night until he fell asleep. Though he did feel guilty for how sleepy she was in the morning.

"You don't have to text me," he whispered to her on the way to their health fitness meeting one morning.

"But you're trying to distract yourself from drinking," she said back, just as softly. "And it helps you, doesn't it?"

He had said no such thing. But, then—and he smiled at this—he knew with her he didn't have to. She saw more than she ever let others let on.

And it wasn't just with him. She knew Joey had a mother issue before anyone had so much as suggested it. She even correctly guessed a drug concoction that Bakura had used the night before based off of his sleepy attitude and 'his eyes.' Ho, Bakura hadn't liked that.

Neither had Joey or Atem.

"Heroin!?" Atem had blustered.

"Shit, man, you know what kind of loaded gun that is. Who the hell you know who gets out of heroin scott free?"

"How much are you taking?" Atem snapped his head to Tea. "How much did he take?"

Tea looked very much like she had just triggered a land bomb on accident and threw up her hands. "I'm not a medical expert! I just read a book…once…and noticed some stuff when I happened to…"

Bakura's bloodshot glare could have curdled dairy, and Tea made a good impression of it into her leather seat.

Thank god a sound proof screen had been between them and the driver this time and not the cramped air of Mai's SUV and, well, Mai.

"I was just experimenting," muttered Bakura, his words slower and not as snappy, like he was tired. It made Atem wonder just how many times he had seen Bakura this way and if he really had been tired or coming off of a high. And now that he was thinking about it, he never really thought about how often the guy wore long sleeves. They were usually part of his usual emo/goth/crazy mad man getup.

"Like hell!?" burst Atem.

Bakura flopped his head towards Tea to squint at her. "Why'd you believe this…bitch over me?"

"You just admitted to it!" Joey shouted back, though not quite the same decibel as Atem.

"I did not. I said I was experimenting, nothing new. God, you two are dense."

The atmosphere in the car grew more alarmed as it dawned on them that Bakura wasn't shaking out of his drowsiness.

"Not dense enough to think you haven't gotten hung up on something by now," snarled Atem. "It's about time we said something, you know, before you up and OD."

Bakura dug his scratching hands into his hair and arched back with a moan. "Like hell I'm going to f' myself up. Neither of you have room to talk."

"I am not addicted to pot," protested Joey. "Not to mention I can't die from a pot overdose. Just get a serious case of the munchies."

"Unlike with the firecracker you're holding up to your face," said Atem.

The white pianist gave an exaggerated roll of his eyes that took his head along with him and pulled his white headphones out of his back pack with a lazy roll of his shoulders.

Atem shot forward and snatched them away.

"Hey!"

Atem stuffed the headphones behind his back as Bakura flailed towards him. "Listen to us!"

"Give back my headphones." Bakura's white teeth were bared, bringing out the fine pinpoints his pupils had become. No one missed how he'd been wiping his nose incessantly, though the man had insisted it was just a cold.

That froze Atem in his place, startled. This was real. This was really happening. This wasn't another of the occasional fight they got into over Bakura's weird recreational habits.

His stomach clench so hard and fast, he almost bent over from the pain. It just made it worse when Bakura's arm dove behind him almost sluggishly.

"We need to get him to a hospital," he found himself saying, stuffing the headphones into Tea's grasp without thinking, where they were quickly snatched up.

"There's nothing wrong," Bakura repeated, with a forced clarity.

But Atem was already at the speaker, pressing the button. "Driver, we need the ER."

Bakura exploded in a slow-mo of expletives. Joey body tackled him as his arms flailed dangerously close to Tea, who had to slid onto the next seat to avoid Bakura's raking claws. Atem could see blood in his eyes.

"There's nothing wrong with me!" Bakura cried.

Just as he said that, Joey slapped his face into the plush carpet and pulled up a sleeve.

"Shit."

There, on the inside of his arm, were red dots, flecked with cover up that had rubbed off onto the underside of Bakura's black t-shirt sleeves.

As Atem met Tea's eyes, his stomach hurting worse than ever, he saw a blank, watery panic, though she kept her expression calm and her hands tightly folded in her lap.

"He left his trash out," she said quietly. "I was just walking by. I wasn't trying to pry."

"Like hell!" came the muffled roar in the carpet.

They called ahead to Mai and Atem volunteered to stay with Bakura to make sure he didn't run, but Joey shot him down, being the taller, stronger one of the three of them. He could restrain Bakura if the wacko tried to run. But they needn't have bothered, because by the time they made it to the ER, Bakura had fallen half-asleep.

Joey swore loudly. "When did he take this stuff? Is it getting worse?"

"Like I know. I've known just as many heroin users as you."

"Don't need to know them," Joey grunted as he crouched down and pulled Bakura's arms over his shoulders. "This dipshits ten of them rolled into one."

Which didn't really fit, Atem thought as he pulled back into the limo, closed the door and watched Joey carting Bakura off through the glass doors. All this time and Joey and he had hardly thought anything of the concoctions Bakura liked to stir together in his room. They knew he sometimes smoked something weird, but since it was so rare they hadn't thought it catastrophic. But even as Atem looked back, growing sicker and sicker by the moment at just how…dismissive he had been, he realized that Joey and he had never really visited Bakura in his room. Whenever they had hung out it had been at Joey's or Atem's place, and that routine hadn't changed with their stardom. And with Bakura picklocking into their apartments to drug their milk or whatever crazy pranks he liked to pull, they had plenty of 'together' time and only knew if they tried to break into Bakura's place for revenge, they'd regret it. Revenge was always best served to Bakura when he couldn't fight back, usually in public, or under the nose of their manager.

And Bakura had always acted so…well, normal for him. He hadn't changed. But there had been signs, hadn't there? Why so bad all asudden?

Or was it sudden?

"How long have you…suspected this?"

Tea squirmed, not looking at him. "Since I joined the band."

Atem flinched, and so did she.

"It's nothing like that!" she said. "It wasn't obvious, so you wouldn't have noticed, I just, uh, I was looking for the signs, since drugs are rather…prevalent in, uh, on the music scene. You know. And it was just his long sleeves and how he kept scratching them whenever he wasn't playing and…yeah. It was really judgemental of me, that's why I didn't say anything."

"Until this morning when you saw his eyes," Atem said stiffly. Anger rolled off him like heatwaves in the desert.

"And the needles," she whispered. "In the trash. I swear I was just walking by."

"Why were you down by Bakura's room anyways."

She clenched her eyes shut and her knees in. "It's stupid, but I had made some of that nice sparkling apple juice from the party and I wanted to-to try and, you know, make some bridges between me and Bakura. I thought, with our band doing so well, he'd be more in a—a good mood, I guess."

"Why are you acting like I'm going to hit you?"

She flinched again, which somehow only made him angrier.

"You're just really angry right now and I thought it might be with me—"

"For what damn reason? You just did what I should have been doing." He scooted away from her and twisted around, hoping that would somehow direct the raging fury within him away as well. "Joey and I should have been more aware of this. For all the attention we were paying, Bakura could be chin deep and shit with no way out."

"There's always a way out," she said quietly.

Not in the mood for one of her Gandalf moments, he said nothing. Instead, he turned his attention to not inflicting serious injury to himself. First Rebecca, and now this? Hell, Rebecca wasn't even the first. Some track record he had.

"Atem…?" The barest of touches fluttered to his shoulder. "You can't do anything about what you didn't do. You can only work with your decisions from here on out."

He shrugged his shoulder, hating the way he felt when she obediently pulled away. She was only trying to help.

Was that all she did? Did she even understand how he felt? Or had her standards kept her safe and sound from even the hint of drugs and troubles? For some reason that just connected back to his late nights without her, struggling with helplessness as he reached for the bottle or pulled up another picture that would never completely satiate the burning within him. She was too clean.

And before he realized what had happened, some of his anger with himself boiled over onto her.

"You don't have a clue what's going on, so stop acting so wise."

After all, he really wasn't in the mood for her Gandalf act. She was a sheltered, naïve, clean-cut girl who had never made any major mistakes in her life. She wouldn't know of this kind of fear, this guilt, this dawning horror to the idea of your friend, who had only you to claim as family, being lost in a heavy addiction that could have killed him if you had noticed it any later.

Maybe he had been too caught up in her to notice. Maybe he had been too drunk, or high on the hype of the stage and the music.

Not a sound passed between them until the limo came to a gentle stop. He all but kicked open the door and slid out, not bothering to look behind him to see if she was following.

Of course, after the record signings and desperate interviewers demanding to know where the other two band members were, he began to calm. Even without it he would have realized inevitably that he had said something wrong. Tea didn't speak out once to the crowd or interviewers. In fact, she hardly even smiled, and when she did it was small and plastic.

When he tried apologizing to her back in the limo, she just looked at him.

When he begged her to say something, she said, in a flat tone that said nothing, "Weren't you right, though?"

"Right about what? You knew more about the situation than even me, that's what I was so angry about, not with anything you did. I just took it out on you, I'm sorry."

She let out a small sigh and her stiff posture melted back into the seat.

"You were thinking that there is no way I could understand because I've probably never been around drugs," she said quietly, almost feebly. "And I don't know Bakura like you do. I don't know your panic. And it doesn't matter what kind of experience I had with my mother and…it just doesn't matter."

"How does it not matter?" And when would he stop being surprised at how well she read him? "Look, I was wrong, I was freaking out, can you please tell me how to make it up to you so we can move on? Please, Tea, I love you."

Though she didn't jump into talking afterwards or warm up, she did settle down next to him after that and massaged his hand, as though comforting herself with the feel of it.

"I'm sorry I didn't say something sooner," she murmured.

He kissed her head. "You have nothing to be sorry for."


	32. Cheating in Heart

**From here on out I'll be updating a chapter every day as a Christmas gift to those who have so kindly taken a chance on my story. :) Merry Christmas. And may your holiday be full of luck and good friends and family.**

Chapter 32

"Atem."

All he could see of Tea were her legs stuck out over the back of his sofa. They had spent their weekend on another trip to the stars and salsa from the Mexican joint. The taste of Mexican cane sugar sodas still stuck in the back of his mouth.

He pawed his spatula at the edge of the crepe he was, well, trying to cook after Tea's careful instruction. It fought him the whole way and fell with a broken splat. He swore softly before calling out, "Yeah?"

"…It's nothing."

But her too small tone said otherwise. Frowning, and deciding to leave the crepe making to Tea, he slid the pan off the burner and made his way to her.

"It doesn't sound like nothing." He leaned over his dark leather sofa to look down at her. She had a phone clutch to her breast that lacked the cherry speckled case hers had.

His.

Trepidation, cold and icy and without a reason to be there, slid down his throat.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"It's nothing," she said in a forced, casual tone. "I'm just trying to pick the perfect embarrassing background."

"You're not very good at lying."

"No really! Look!" And she twisted the phone around to show him the character's from a toddler show that was especially abhorrent.

He groaned and took the opportunity to snatch it from her hand. "That's it, no touching my phone. Bad Tea."

The mischievous smile she gave him didn't reach her eyes. But he didn't have long to think about it as she got up and stretched.

"I just remembered some embarrassing lady stuff I have to attend to back at my apartment. I'm going to go take care of that. Let me know when you got a plate of those crepes to eat, yeah?"

"Uh, Tea, I still feel like something's wrong. And I can't cook these, I just ruined it."

"That's why it takes practice! Don't worry, screw up as much as you need to."

"Tea—"

She all but closed the door in his face, probably hoping to make a good show of not hearing him above the 'whoosh' of the moving door.

He stared at the back of it, a burning, icy chill sinking past his skin to his bones. His hands had gone cold.

 _She saw_.

He shook off the thought and pulled out his phone. He couldn't jump to conclusions, or rather, he didn't want to face the possibility of what she would think of him if she…

He'd left open his browser in one of his phone's windows. She wouldn't have seen it unless she had pushed the window buttons, but still.

He cleared all the windows, hands shaking. The pink dots of the nipples he'd flicked off his phone burned in his vision like an after-image. Fear, sheer, raw, and needle like, struck through the icy cold. Something screamed at him to go after her, to explain to her that it was only because he wanted her—that it was because he didn't want to push her—and yet he couldn't seem to move his legs.

Because God Almighty, he wasn't ready for this. He wasn't ready to face the possibility of losing her.

As though just to make it worse, flash images of playing music with her in his music room, talking under the stars, snorting Mexican soda, dancing with her head arched back, hair like a veil—

His legs bent forward with snap and he stumbled towards the door. He didn't bother to close it behind it, just ran to the stairs, heart like ice and pattering like humming bird's wings against his throat.

On reaching her door, he first twisted the doorknob, having been welcomed to just walking in for over a month now, but it was lock. That tightened the terror, and he barely restrained himself from hammering as he knocked.

"Tea, we need to talk."

Nothing. His throat was constricting.

"Tea?" Doorbell. Maybe she was in the bathroom. Maybe she wasn't lying about 'lady problems.' "Tea, I'm kind of freaking out here. Please, can we talk?"

When he heard the tapping of her shoes on the floorboards, he sucked in a breath. She was coming, they could clear this out, everything would be okay.

And then her dead expression appeared in the crack of her doorway, as she only half opened it. There was no pretense or pretending. It was just blank. Empty.

That's how she got when she didn't want to feel.

"It's okay," she told him, and even dared a plastic smile. "I said I was coming back."

"I know what you saw on my phone," he said quickly. "I can explain."

The smile fell. "A week's worth, every night…" her voice was almost a whisper.

"I can explain—it's not what you think-"

"That's the thing, I don't really know what I think right now. I…I don't want to do this wrong, Atem. I don't want to say something stupid to screw this up. So please, just…just give me a minute to figure it out." Her words had taken on a brittle tone, and he got the sudden impression of someone who would shatter if one but breathed too hard on them.

And her eyes. They weren't bright at all, and they stared right at him, as though he weren't even there. She had been almost flushed this morning, and it had looked lovely against the cream of her turtle neck sweater. Now she was whiter than the sweater.

Thus, though he heard her, he hardly registered what she had said. Terror gripped him.

Because he had done something very bad. He had broken her. Hurt her worse than Bakura ever had.

Trembling, sweating, he reached out to her through the half open door, and cringed when she flinched back, not in disgust, but with a spark of fear. Again he got the impression of brittleness.

"Don't shut me out. Please, I want to work on this with you. I want to make this right. I've…" his voice cracked and his eyes burned. "Tea."

That seemed to break the spell. She had started to tremble as well, and her chin dimpled.

Then he blinked and she had run from the door and was halfway down her hallway.

"Tea!"

He went after her, even as the door to her bedroom slammed shut. He was careful to close her front door behind him. She was vulnerable now, he couldn't risk letting anyone catch wind of this. A desperate sort of protectiveness rose up in him and he locked the door and closed the curtains on her huge windows as well. He'd be damned if the paparazzi managed to invade her privacy now.

He didn't bother trying the handle of her bedroom door. But as he took a breath to speak, a muffled, choked sob made its way through the door. It was quiet, and sounded as though she had retreated to the farthest corner of her room, but it was enough to send a spike of burning guilt through the coldness of his fear.

Perhaps that was why they said hell was on fire.

Since he figured he deserved it, he made himself sit there and listen as Tea struggled to keep control over a fit of hysteric sobbing that was already having its way.

 _I want to do this right,_ she had said, and another stab of hot guilt went through him.

This was so much worse than listening to Rebecca cry. Hell, compared to this, that had been like listening to a three-year-old crying because you took their candy. He thought he might be sick with the force of it.

When he finally opened his mouth, he had to try again as his first words had come out so quiet, he doubt she could hear him.

"Tea, I swear this isn't because you're not enough or because I want someone else. I didn't look that stuff up because—because of whatever that's hurting you so bad. I just didn't want to—to burden you with my sexual wants or pressure you, and it was making it hard to sleep because I—because I want you so—I love you so much, I just want to hold you all night long and never let go to the point it hurts. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you, I never meant to hurt you, I never want to hurt you. Please, can I come in? I can't stand…" He swallowed hard, but the rock stayed. He blinked hard at the pain in his eyes. "Tea?"

He reached up and twisted the doorknob. To his surprise, it wasn't locked, and he slowly opened the door.

Without the wood to muffle the sound, the sounds Tea was making were that much worse. He couldn't see her and had to follow the sounds to the other side of her bed and against the wall, behind her night stand, where she had curled into a tight ball, her head between her knees, her arms wrapped about her so tight her hands gripped her shoulder blades.

"Don't come close," she gasped. Just as he felt a knife of hurt, she added so quickly he hardly heard, "I don't want to hurt you—do this wrong—misunderstand."

"Hurt me?" How the hell—"You're the one who's hurt so bad it's starting a panic attack. Breathe, relax, you haven't done anything wrong."

"I have—I have—" she choked, and her breathing picked up, shallow, short, hyperventilating. "I'm sorry, I didn't do—I can't—I don't know why—"

"Hush, breathe, it's okay, you're okay." He reached out for her, then hesitated. "Can I touch you?"

But she just gasped and tightened even further, barely comprehensible squeaks of, "I'm sorry," "I don't know why," and "what did I do wrong?"

Biting the bullet, he reached out to that tiny space between her nightstand and the wall and pulled her out. She came out stiffly, like a doll of starch paper and zipties, but coiled readily into his lap, where she proceeded to cling to the fabric of his pant leg. Her eyes had gone wide and glassy as she gasped against a stream of tears and snot.

Perhaps he would have thought her silly or overreacting if he hadn't been overwhelmed with fear for her and alarm. He couldn't even comprehend the thought of calling a hospital or even Mai, as his fierce protectiveness snapped up like a force field, reiterating that he couldn't let anyone see her like this…and see that he had been the cause of it.

But all he found himself capable of amidst the fire, amidst the panic and horror, was making soothing hushing noises and stroking her hair and hands, which had gone as cold as his.

An immeasurable time later, she began to calm. Her broken chants went quiet, her harsh trembling quailed, and she brought her hands up to her face. He didn't stop, even when her sobs fell to hiccupping breaths that always came after a too hard cry. He did find the mind capacity to bring down a box of pink tissues that were on her nightstand. As he took it off, a laminated card fell face first into the carpet.

"I'm sorry," she murmured. "I didn't mean to…fall apart like that. I didn't want you to see. I'm so sorry."

He just offered her a tissue and kept smoothing her hair. He feared if he spoke, he might break her again.

"I'm so pathetic. I'm so…" She took the tissue and pulled her knees up. "I hate me. I hate me so much. Who falls apart like that? You probably feel like the worst human being right now, I am so, so sorry—" her voice pitched high into a whine and her flushed, puffing face scrunched up against more tears.

He flinched. "No! Don't think about it, just breathe. Relax. Relax, everything's okay."

"But you're not the worst human being," she choked. "You're wonderful and beautiful and nice and loyal and honest and so freaking cute when you hum with your cello and get all serious about waving back and forth when you play piano and-and-and I'm s-s-so afraid that you'll think otherwise because I—because I…" She crunched even tighter, and her next words came out as a tiny wail. "I huuuuuurrrt."

The burning in his eyes pitched to tears themselves. God, he was actually crying. "Tea…"

"I don't even know why," she whined. "They're just pictures, pictures shouldn't hurt this much, and I know you see nothing wrong with it and a lot of people just accept it as normal or even fun—but that just makes it hurt even more-it huuuuurrts. It hurts that something so—so bad—something so hurts—so—so—"

"Tea, serious, breathe. You can't do this to yourself, you have got to calm down. Just focus on my hand on your head. Focus on the movement." He sniffed hard, angrily, but didn't move his hand from its stroking.

She hiccupped so hard it must have hurt and pressed her brow and eyes into his stomach.

"I don't know what to do," she croaked. "Atem, I don't know what to do. It feels like you cheated on me with all those women—all those sex goddesses that I could never compare to. You imagined, pretended—I'm sorry, I just—you should go. I'll clean up, I'll take care of this."

"I'm not just going to leave you alone like this. Come on, we'll go for a drive. I'll get you something sweet to calm you down. I'll get you…I'll get you anything." He groaned and his hand finally left her head to cover his wet eyes. "I'm such a piece of shit."

She sat up sharply and smacked the side of his arm—hard. "No you aren't! Don't you ever say that!"

He dropped his hand to glare at her. "I'll say it if it's true. You're reaction just proves that."

Her breathing hitched and she stared at him, as though she had been the one smacked. For a second, he feared she was falling under again, but then she hiccupped and reached for the nightstand to help herself up.

"You need to go," she said.

"You're coming with me—"

She shook her head hard. "No. This isn't working. You need to leave. Please."

He couldn't argue with that. He had no right to.

"At least promise me you'll…" She'll what? Not dump him? Not leave him in the cold and never say a word to him again?

She must have seen the uncertainty and fear on his face, for her poor, puffy, red-eyed face melted into a soft expression that he had to look away from. He didn't deserve to be looked at like that.

Her hands touched his head, heartbreakingly soft. "Baby, I'm not leaving. It'll be okay."

But as he wiped off his face and stepped out of her apartment, he couldn't be sure if that was entirely a good thing.


	33. A Talk With Mom and Wheaties

**Make sure you read the chapter that I updated yesterday. ^.^ So you don't miss it.**

Chapter 33

He swore to her to never look at it again, to give her command of his phone if she ever doubted him, and she accepted it without saying much with that weak smile that didn't reach her eyes. Even though she picked up as though everything had been resolved, it didn't feel like it to him. He was too aware of the pink rim around her eyes when she greeted him in the morning, the chill to her hands when he held them, the distant, empty look she got when she thought no one was looking, and the minute withdrawal from his touch. She didn't talk as much, and when they kissed good-night she didn't linger, but ended it short.

It told him of an ending.

He realized he had forgotten her birthday when he woke up to puke and saw a text from her at 11am, which had been two hours ago.

 **Heading to Kaiba's for lunch with Kisara and Mokuba. Got a little worried when you wouldn't answer my calls, but your door was locked. Please text me back when you wake up.**

And he had a nice long list of her and Joey's worrying as he recovered around the foot of his toilet. He read it all with an aching numbness, wishing he was still drunk. He had meant to plan something fun for her birthday, but a concert was coming up on the 23th of December, and they had been caught up in preparation for it. Kaiba had high hopes that it would be a huge turnout, and Mai had taken antsy to a whole new level. The work had been good for them as it distracted Atem from the unease he felt, but nighttime, as always, brought it back tenfold.

His unease was fed by the fact that he knew she wasn't happy, and he didn't know how to talk to her about it. What if she melted down again? At least she had taken him up on his promise and took his phone when they turned in for the night, but lately she hadn't really cared to, and that spoke volumes to him. It said to him that she didn't want to care.

' _There's no reason. You don't have any beliefs or reasons to think it's bad, do you?'_

She said that and yet nothing ever sounded more wrong. What more reason did he need other than it hurt her? That she cared about it? What about her feelings?

' _What we really need to talk about is your drinking. I know you're doing everything you can to keep it under wraps, but I can't…it's smothering you. It's making you sick, it makes you stupid, it makes you…not you.'_

He snorted at that memory and instantly regretted it as bile got up into his sinuses. Burning nose and retching at the same time. Yay.

Of course he knew what it was doing to him, mainly because of her. She had come into his life like a dazzling sun, bringing out the shadows and blurs his life and music had become in the drunken haze. Because of her he could remember what it was like before the drink, as well as what his life could be. She had taken the songs mumbling about in his heart, pulled them out, and turned them on full blast to sing and dance to with those long legs and bouncing laughter. She had seen the desert in him and instead of washing it away in a flood of water, praised the golden sun and sands and declared them majestic. She made the barren land a gleaming oasis for romantic Arabic nights.

But he also couldn't sleep without alcohol. The blissful numbness and buzz was all that was keeping him sane at nights, what with the porn and his fear and his stress and watching her try too hard to handle her own misery, as though it really were all her fault. He hated himself. Even as she loved him and he felt like he was worth something in her arms, he hated what he saw of himself in her light.

And he was afraid that she'd had already seen her affect on his self-loathing with that uncanny intuition of hers.

He staggered to his feet and peeled off his sweaty boxers.

 _'She's not good for you.'_

Bakura's words stopped him as he reached for the shower knob.

It had been a quiet two weeks since Mai had forced Bakura into rehab. He had recently returned for rehearsals uncannily quiet and morose, not even bothering with to crack a creepy joke or a jab at Tea. So far the public hadn't caught wind of his drug visit, and their publicist was intent on keeping it that way.

As he yanked on the knob and turned the water as hot as he could stand, he remembered that night when Bakura had turned fragile and spoke of his well-guarded concern.

And for the first time, Atem allowed himself to wonder if it was true.

When he finally came out, he thought of her as he dried himself, trying to focus on that which was similar between them.

 _My mother has a hard time with men,_ she had said when they'd talked about each other's families. _But instead of giving up like your mom did after the first one, she kept trying and kept making bad choices. I think she has an emptiness inside of her she couldn't help but try to fill, and she also has this personal belief that leaving her kids without a father in the home is bad…I once got caught up in my own feelings and told her it would have been better if she had just stayed alone, because she was hurting her kids by allowing herself to be hurt, and then I found out she had been secretly drinking to cope with all the horrid relationships…my grandma told me later that she tried to commit suicide not soon after I moved out because of my comments, and other things, probably things I had said. It hadn't helped that she heard I was staying in a homeless shelter. My grandma said I added unnecessary guilt…_

He had asked her why she had moved out then. Once more she had repeated that there wasn't any room for her, than hesitated.

 _My step father said I…it was just something I said. It's my fault._

It had taken quite a bit longer for her to finally reveal that her step father had more or less told her she was unwelcome, due to her lack of forethought, offensive nature, and self-righteous attitude. Though he'd had to pick out the whole story with how often she tried to change the subject.

It suddenly made that much more sense why Bakura had affected her so much at first, and why she was still self-conscious about her beliefs. She never backed down, never compromised her standards, always tried so freaking hard, and yet she didn't once ask any of them to live them as well. She had never given him reason to believe she thought herself better, nor had she ever asked him to change. At most she invited him to church with her on Sundays, but it was more because she wanted to spend time with him than some unspoken need to purify him or indoctrinate him. She didn't even really believe that going to church did any good for you unless you chose to make it so.

She respected his agency implacably to the point it was detrimental. There was a whole world she feared to speak to him about, and which he would have no problem hearing about. He even wanted to know. He wanted to know why it made her so happy. He wanted to understand why she stood so steadfast. He just wanted to know her. He loved her.

Tea. His brilliant, dazzling sunshine.

He paused fully clothed in his bathroom doorway to press his forehead to the frame. His eyes had started to burn again.

No wonder she freaked out when he talked badly about himself. No wonder she was so aware of her affect on him and frightened of his guilt.

Then why didn't she just give it up? Give up trying to be so good? Let her hair down a bit?

He already knew the answer to that. Because she was Tea. She would try to do the right thing to the end. It was one of the reasons he loved her.

Sniffing, he straightened, shook himself, and went to pour himself a bowl of his favorite Wheaties.

Half way through his bowl and conversation with Wheaties current month's boxed athlete, an unknown number called his phone. He answered with more annoyance than curiosity.

"Hello?"

" _Is this Atem? Tea's band leader?"_

He frowned. Oh please don't be a crazy fan. He'd already had to change his number twice because of that.

"Yes?"

" _Oh hey! This is Tea's mom, Risa. Are you eating Wheaties right now?"_

His spoon halted in mid-air. "Okay, that's just creepy."

The light, feminine voice laughed. _"Well, I needed something to prove my identity. I can't believe this number actually worked, I always thought rock stars would be harder to get a hold of. How are you?"_

"A…little weirded out that someone I've never met knows my breakfast preferences."

" _Pfft, that's nothing. You're dating my little girl. If she hadn't talked to me about you, I would have made her regret it. I am her mom, after all. You tell your mom about anyone you date."_

"Yeah. Sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but why are you calling?" Crap, that did sound rude. Ugh, his people skills were sucking this morning. Wait, afternoon. Frick, what time was it?

" _Tea's not answering her phone and I was hoping to tell her happy birthday."_

"Um, yeah, she's at our producer's house, so answering her phone might be considered rude. Our producer's King of Anal. Wait, did that sound wrong?"

" _Only if you meant 'King of Anal Sex,' which would be seriously ironic."_

Atem choked on a laugh that came up too quick. He hadn't been expecting something like that from Tea's mom of all people. She had raised Tea in her religion, after all.

" _Well, guess I'll just be patient then. Do you think you could help me with a little birthday gift I'm sending her?"_

"Of course. What do you need me to do?"

" _Oh, just pick up some children under the age of twelve at the airport and make sure they don't get kidnapped or molested or anything. Huge responsibility. I was just going to ask Tea to do it, but I just got the idea that it would be way cooler if it was a surprise. But now that I think about it I may not want her strange boyfriend going near my kids."_ A pause. " _Are you a sex offender?"_

His jaw dropped. "H-how do you answer something like that?"

" _True. If you were one it's unlikely you'd admit it, let alone to your girlfriend's mom. How about this: I'm on my lunch break now. We'll have a nice talk and I'll decide when we're done, yeah?"_

Since when did she decide that picking up some kids was a special treat? It was almost as though she could tell he felt guilty for not having done anything yet for Tea's birthday.

" _Btw, I know you haven't done anything for Tea's birthday yet, so consider this a safety net if that happens to remain true for the rest of the day."_

He pulled back the phone to stare at it. At least he knew where Tea got her uncanny intuition from. Seriously, this woman would be the kind of mother-in-law who knew your wife was pregnant before anyone else, including her unwitting daughter.

So, they talked. The last of his Wheaties grew soggy so he just tossed them, finding himself enjoying the conversation. It wasn't unlike talking to Tea, though there were definitely more hesitance and gentleness to Tea. For one, she didn't shout out 'anal sex' at a complete stranger or ask if they were a sex offender. He supposed he could be grateful for that.

Around 45 minutes later, Risa announced her lunch hour thoroughly spent and they took a moment to wind it down.

Just before she said her good-byes, however, she said, " _You really are honest, aren't you_?"

A now familiar grin stretched his mouth. "Again, how do you answer that?"

There was a momentary pause. He heard her take a quick breath.

" _She's a lot better than me, you know. I sometimes think she was an angel God sent down to me that I then screwed up. I know that's probably not true, but…she was always strong when I faltered. I know I depended on her more than I should while she was growing up. She was always a light to her siblings."_ Another pause. " _I'm sorry, but…I don't think you're worthy of her. I know that's weird coming from a mom, because all mom's probably think no one is worthy of their daughter, but I mean it. I don't think you could make her happy_."

A familiar, uneasy cold stiffened up his muscles and tightened his chest.

" _I don't mean that to be offensive_ ," she repeated, apologetic. " _That sounded really bad. Everything I heard about you makes you sound like a really sweet boy."_

"It's okay," he said, not caring if she could hear how hollow he felt. "I've been thinking the same thing." The thought occurred to him to ask if Tea had told her mom about the porn yet, but he decided against it. She had to go to work, and it wasn't like it would change anything.

" _Do you intend on becoming that man?"_

He drew up short from a wall he had been pacing to and from as he talked. Something painful and warm alighted in his chest.

"How?" he asked, faintly. "I mean, of course, if it was possible, most definitely, I want nothing more, but I…I don't even know where to begin."

He could hear the woman's smile as she said, " _Oh, I think you know. You have been the one spending all the time with her. What kind of man do you think she needs? Oh, here comes my boss, I'm in trouble. Do you think he'll believe me if I said I was talking to the Atem of Milenial Sands?"_

He let out a short puff of mirth. "Take care."

" _You too. And don't tell Tea we had this talk! I want to do it. It will give me a reason to call."_

It wasn't till he had hung up and set to putting his Wheaties away that he realized she had forgotten to tell him whether he was picking up Tea's siblings or not. He noticed the time when he sent her a quick text and rushed to the front, where Mai was no doubt waiting for him with blond hair popping out of her perfect bun.


	34. Rosegold and Sparklies

**A sickenly sweet chapter. :3 Let me know what you think, pwease!**

Chapter 34

He would have found the time to go shopping for Tea's present even if Mai had only released him from his guest appearance of some reality TV show at two in the morning. Luckily, that wasn't the case, and he managed to reach the nearest jewelry store twenty minutes before they closed.

There was something incredibly satisfying about finally getting into the store he had been forcing himself not to eyeball ever since the idea of marrying Tea floated through his head. And since he was alone, not to mention the salespeople were clearly delighted to have someone like him there, he took his time looking at all the rings, even though he only had intentions of buying a necklace. The idea had come to him when he had been lazily messing with Tea's stuff in her bedroom and realized the nicest piece of jewelry she had was a dirty set of zirconium sterling silver earrings. They had found the girl living out of a homeless shelter, after all, so it wasn't that surprising. Just made it all the easier to spoil her.

When he had asked her what kind of jewelry she liked, even as he told her his plans to do said spoiling, she had only garbled something about 'sparklies' and 'rosegold.'

There were a lot of sparklies set in rosegold here.

"Is there anything you'd like a closer look of?"

It was the third time the particular sales girl had asked him that. The words Tea's mother had said to spark hope in him again made him take up her offer this time and he pointed to a delicate, decorated rosegold ring set with three good sized diamonds.

"There's a warranty on the diamonds should they fall out," she said as he took the ring from her. "And it comes with a matching wedding band."

He slid his thumbnail underneath the diamonds and watched the lights dance. He even knew her ring size from spying some tiny print in one of her cheap gold rings that had copper showing through.

Risa had said he already knew how to become the man worthy of Tea. He already knew how to make her happy. It was true. Even as he turned the diamonds in the light, the things he needed to do rolled out in his head: Tea wanted a man that was all hers and no one else's, not to porn stars, not to alcohol, not even to a fan base or to a career. A man who would do the right thing by her even when she was on the other side of the world. A man that would put her second to none. A man who was honest, loyal, faithful, enduring, and who would support and defend her beliefs.

He had never talked to her about the Mormon Temple. He had never talked to her about marriage.

If he thought of it that way, he was already half way there.

He bought the ring and had its velveteen box wrapped in gauzy fabric and set in a perfectly sized, opaque shopping bag. He then bought a rose gold, solitaire diamond necklace that had a matching set of 1 karat diamond earrings to match.

"She's a lucky girl," said the sales girl. "Not just because of the pretties, mind you. I've only heard good things about you, and that love song you wrote for her," she made a whimsical, fainting sound.

He smiled and hoped it was true. No, he would make it true.

He didn't get the chance to give it to her until late next morning, when he finally received a text saying he could come over.

Even as he knocked on her door, he could hear half a dozen feet dashing about like a crazed storm and children's laughter pitching in the air. It made his stomach leap, but not as much as seeing her beaming face when she opened the door. He had never noticed how pale she had gotten over the past few weeks until he saw how flushed her cheeks had become from happiness.

"Atem!" she threw her arms around his neck. "I feel like it's been forever, but it's only been a day and a half! Come in and meet my siblings."

Careful to keep the little wrapped box safe in his back pocket, he stood at attention as two half-sized people took a running start and slid across the hard-wood floors. By the dirt on their socks, they had been at it for a while. Both looked to be around or under the age of ten, though their relation to Tea wasn't immediately apparent. For one, the little girl had almost black hair and dark brown eyes, and the boy was blond with gray eyes and a long, narrow face.

"This is Shea and Trajan. Guys, this is my boyfriend, Atem."

The girl mashed her clenched fists to her chin and squealed. Loud.

"I can't believe my sister's dating you! My friend loves your stuff, will you sign my T-shirt?"

"Do you buy her lots of expensive stuff?" asked the boy, who tried to play it cool but it was obvious he was trying not to start bouncing or squealing as well.

"Now, is this your mom talking or your age?" asked Atem.

Tea raised an eyebrow. "Since when have you talked with my mom?"

"Since yesterday. It was quite enlightening."

"Yesterday? She didn't say anything." With a pout she pulled out her phone. "And seriously, Trajan, even the worst kind of boyfriends can buy expensive gifts. You're not doing very good at this whole protective-brother-intimidator act."

"I wasn't trying to be. I just wanted to see what kind of cool stuff a rock star gets for his girlfriend."

Atem smirked. "Well, there is this." He pulled out the little package from his pocket.

Tea's sister gave another squeal and started hopping.

Just then, the door to the bathroom opened and a kid he actually knew stepped out.

"Hey, Atem," said Mokuba, shyly. Atem was confused for a moment as to why the producer's super-protected son would be in Tea's apartment of all places, but then remembered Tea's offer back at the dance party to introduce him to her siblings, and Seto's compliance.

"You know him?" squeaked her sister.

"Of course he knows him. His dad, uh, makes the CDs and stuff. Tea! Get over here and open this present! Atem's got you something!"

Atem inwardly winced. Did kids always have to yell? She was still in the same room.

"Stop yelling, I'm coming." Tea slid back from where she had gone to plug her phone up on the counter. "What's that for?"

"Your birthday present. A day late, but better late than never."

"What kind of rock star gets their girl a present late?"

Before Atem could think of how to react to that, Tea slapped Trajan across the head. Not hard, but both Mokuba and Atem flinched.

"Stop being a jerk or I'm leaving you behind."

Trajan glared at her through narrowed eyes, rubbing his head. "You never said you were going anywhere."

"That's because I decided it this morning. With you guys here I can do the traditional Christmas decorating-tree-something-or-other-bananza."

Both siblings beamed.

"Ooo! Ooo! Can we listen to Carpenters? Can we?" said Shea.

"You have a tree?" asked Trajan.

"We're going to get one," said Tea, sliding her nail through the wrapping paper and slipping out the black box. Her eyebrows knitted together at the gold logo on the front, but when she opened it he was gifted with a rush of pleasure as her jaw dropped. Instantly, her younger siblings crowded about her.

"Pretty!" cried Shea.

"Dang, are those real?" asked Trajan.

"Of course they're real," said Atem, inwardly preening himself with self-satisfaction. "I'm a rock star, aren't I?"

He even got huge, gratified smile from Trajan. The kid's narrow face made his smile reach from side to side easily, and in that moment, Atem caught a flash of Tea in his smile. The sibling resemblance was finally found.

"Beautiful," she murmured, running a finger along the chain. "Atem, these…are you okay giving me something so expensive? I mean…what if you stop liking me, or—"

"The point of a gift is that it becomes yours, no matter the outcome," he said, though what he really wanted to say was that there was no way he'd stop liking her, and that he had something even more expensive waiting for her in his apartment. "Now, I heard something about a Christmas tree?"

"Yeah!" cried the brother and sister. Much more subdued Mokuba just smiled, though it reached his eyes.

"And then after we're going to play Poke'mon and Tea's the trainer, and I'm going to be Ninetails!" shouted Shea.

"I call Charizard! What are you gonna be, Moki?"

Mokuba jumped a little. "Uh…"

"You said you liked Pokémon, didn't you?" asked Shea, suddenly all sweet concern.

"Just don't be Pikachu," said Trajan. "You'd be super stupid to pick Pikachu—ow!"

"He can be whatever he wants," said Tea, though her eyes were still on the necklace.

"At least look when you hit me, woman."

"That's 'Master Woman' to you, sir." She closed the box slowly. "I guess I'll just put these away then."

"Aren't you going to wear them?" asked Atem.

Her eyes went big. "But they're so nice. Won't it look weird?"

"I got a simple design so you could wear them whenever you like. Here, I'll help you put it on."

She gave him another brilliant, eye glittering smile for that.

Once he'd done the latch and she had put in the earrings, she turned around for him to see and he got another rush of self-satisfaction. The rosegold complimented her skin well, and the necklace rested just right above the collar of her shirt and where her cleavage hid.

Then she threw herself into his arms, hugging him tightly.

"Thank you, baby," she whispered.

"Eww, PDA!"

"You're so immature, Trajan."

"Precocious little thing, is she?" asked Atem, hugging her back. "Your sister."

"Oh yeah. Don't let her make you think otherwise."


	35. Spying on Christmas

**Forgot to pick up the refill on my meds that counteract my anti-anxiety medication's horrid side effect of insomnia. T.T Got, like...2 hours of sleep and two anxiety attacks. My brain is just swell, don't you think?**

 **But I'll count my blessings, because my brain may be shot, but I have a staunch, healthy, curvy, sexy body! :D If you ignore the leprosy like acne on my back-which I am because right now I'm counting blessings, not getting up at four in the morning to find some milk to control my low blood sugar and need to vomit due to panic or how bad my eyes hurt or...I'M SEXY!**

Chapter 35

It wasn't too long after he and Tea had loaded all the kids in his car and gotten on their way that he noticed a sleek, black car following close after.

"Oh, that's just my bodyguards," said Mokuba shyly. "Don't mind them. They're paid to not be noticeable."

Shea and Trajan did much ooing and awing over that, before grilling Mokuba on every exciting 'close call' stories with his bodyguards and would-be-Mokuba-harmers from him, and by the time Atem had pulled into the Wal-mart parking lot, Mokuba had opened up enough to jabber with the rest of them.

"They look like they're getting along well," said Atem conversationally as he fell into step with her on the way across the parking lot.

She was looking over her shoulder and smiled when he said that. "Moki has a hard time finding friends that don't instantly try to kiss up to him or be nice just to get on his good side." She turned back around and took his hand. "My siblings have my mom's inability to not say what's on their minds, well, at least Trajan does, so I don't think they could be two-faced even if they wanted to."

Even as she said this, Atem heard Trajan ask Mokuba how huge his house was and if the lights were all crystal chandeliers. Both the kids laughed when, on entering, Mokuba mentioned how he had never actually been in a Wal-mart.

"That's so cool!" said Trajan. "I want to be super rich like that someday."

"Well, it's not all…that…" Atem heard more than saw Mokuba's hesitance.

"Here come the bodyguards," muttered Tea. "Crap, they look so out of place here. Maybe I should have gone somewhere else."

Atem shrugged and squeezed her hand. "You're the one who said you had a hard time spending money. Do you want a fake tree or a real tree?"

Her attention snapped back to him, eyes going wide with wonder. "I could get a real tree?"

He tossed his head back and laughed. God, how could such a little statement make him love her so much?

Just as Atem had said before, a hat was enough to keep both of them from getting weird looks, even in a such a public place as Wal-mart. Mokuba didn't show the slightest bit of concern, which Atem assumed made sense since his father went out of his way to keep him out of public knowledge. As he watched the kid hoping around the outdoor center that had been converted to purely Christmas decorations with Tea's siblings, he couldn't help but think that, despite being a tight-ass jerk-wad, Kaiba had done something right.

"Let's have a shopping cart race!" cried Trajan.

Mokuba went wide eyed. "You can do that in Wal-mart?"

Tea broke from his hand. "No, you cannot. Why don't you guys be useful and help me find ornaments and stuff?"

"Okay, but what colors do you want and stuff?" asked Shea.

Tea hesitated, glancing up at the row of rainbow ordered plastic tubes of baubles. Smelling her uncertainty like blood in the water, the hyper sharks moved in for the kill.

"Blue and orange! Blue and orange!" crowed Trajan.

"Silver and pink and purple!" cried Shea.

"Rainbows! Do all of them!" cheered Mokuba.

"No way, that's gay-colors. She ain't no lesbian," said Trajan.

"I'm telling mom you said the 'l' word!"

"Lesbian isn't a swearword, Shea! Oh my gosh, you're so annoying."

Mokuba shrunk. "It doesn't have to be rainbow."

Atem just stopped himself from putting his hands over his ears, even though he was laughing his head off.

"Oy, it's my tree, I get to pick!" shouted Tea above it all. "Rose gold and diamondy stuff, go!"

"After your necklace?" said Trajan with disgust, wrinkling his nose. "Aw, come on, that's sappy."

"I said go! Fly! Launch like birdies and find me goodies!"

Mokuba and Shea shot off, so Trajan had no choice but to follow or be left behind.

Atem was still chortling. "Are they always like this?"

"You haven't been around kids much, have you?"

"I'm an only child so, no, I guess not."

She gave him a broad smile. "Well, there's nothing better for a boring day or a lack of friends then a bunch of siblings, let me tell you that. I have two more siblings who couldn't come because of school, and one summer, after we had just moved, we made up a dodgeball team in the back yard. Jake has insane reflexes. He was bouncing and flipping off the huge cinder block wall in the back and then he went in and got this cape…"

She went on with stories of various adventures she had had with her four younger siblings as they picked out glass ornaments and wrapping paper. Occasionally one of the three crazies bounced back with an ornament or a whole box of ornaments, and if she approved she put it in the cart Atem pulled along behind him.

The ornaments were cheap. The other customers they saw were often anti-social and fat. There was a light somewhere that was flickering like mad instead of just going out and he occasionally wondered why it hadn't given someone a seizure yet, and the kids, even Mokuba, had a tendency to start talking at a yell.

And yet Atem found himself having the time of his life. Maybe it was the occasional outlandish comment from Trajan that no sane human being would say in polite society. Maybe it was the sassy way Shea kept putting her hand on her hip as she'd tell Trajan off right after she had just bounced down an aisle like a three-year-old. Or maybe it was seeing Mokuba bloom into a pretty normal kid who told a loud, but very involved audience about how being rich meant he couldn't leave the house whenever he wanted or be friends with whoever he wanted, and the school he went to had assigned uniforms.

Or maybe it was watching Tea as she would smile gently whenever they weren't looking. She was kind and attentive to them without falling out of her role as sister and into mother. Though he couldn't help but see her smiling like that down at her own children as they presented ornaments to her like little salesmen and tugged her shirt for her attention.

At last, they couldn't possibly fit anymore Christmas decorations in the cart and headed up front to check out. She bought them each drinks and keychains of their favorite Pokémon, even Mokuba, who blushed with pleasure, proving his unspoiled nature. Seto Kaiba had done something right indeed.

Atem thought he could begin to understand why Tea was so ready to throw aside a music career in the name of raising children.

"Hey, is that your bodyguard?"

They couldn't all help but follow Shea's little finger to where a man in a black suit, buzz cut, and huge build stood tucked next to the Wal-mart greeter, a little old lady with a festive bow in her hair who was trying to ease away from him without being obvious.

"Yeah, that's Roland. Dad's not going to be happy to hear you've all noticed him, but I like him. He's the only one that actually talks to me sometimes."

Atem got a creepy chill from looking at him. Not the 'I'm secretly a child molestor' chill, but the 'I can kill you and dispose of your body where no one will ever find it faster than you can blink' chill.

Back in the car, one child mentioned they were hungry and that started the chorus of hungries that made it sound like there were ten kids back there instead of three.

"Would you guys stop doing that? You're just trying to be obnoxious," said Tea.

"And it's working," said Trajan.

"A noogie works too, so shut it and tell me what you want already."

"Nuggets!" cried Shea.

"Yeah! I bet Mokuba's never had Micky D's nuggets before. That's the cheap of the cheap, and that's why they're so good!"

Mokuba grinned. "My mom would die if she heard I ate McDonalds."

Atem nodded and tapped open the GPS on his phone. "McDonalds it is."

When they returned to her apartment, a modest 8 foot living Christmas tree strapped to the top of his Volkswagon, he realized he had forgotten the get together Bakura and Joey had planned the week before and sent them a text to say he wouldn't be there. When Tea voiced concern, he shut her up with a kiss, sending her siblings into wild catcalls and whoops.

"Spiiiiit!" hollered Trajan as ran away across the apartment lawn.

Tea unstuck herself from his mouth to shout, "Get back here, minion, you still need to help with the tree!"

"Oh yeah! Sorry!"

It was quite the party, hauling in the tree up the stairs themselves with three kids loaded up with breakable ornaments. It wasn't till they had gotten everything set up that they realized they had forgotten a stand for the freaking tree.

"I'm pretty sure Joey has one," said Atem. "I'll go see if we can borrow it."

"Why does Joey have a Christmas tree stand?" asked Tea. "Won't he need it?"

"I'll buy him another one. I just don't want to go out again." He tried giving her his sexy stage smile and sang as low as he could. " _Baby, it's cold outside."_

She laughed loud and unlady-like, and it lit up her face like the noon-day sun.

Since Joey was out, he set a text to him about what he needed and waited till his friend sent him the code to his door, since he had a code lock installed after he lost his seventh key. He ignored the teasing text that followed about playing house with Tea and the brood, breathed through his mouth as he dug out the tree stand from a particularly smoky smelling closet, and headed downstairs.

Someone was waiting for him outside Tea's door. A young woman, with long, stylish golden pigtails and a sexy little plaid miniskirt. And she wore fishnet beneath it, not the thick black leggings or baggy jeans Tea always wore beneath her too-short skirts.

He froze. The sensation of having swallowed something big and spiky sank down to his gut.

"Rebecca?"


	36. Gutted

**Another disclaimer for the faint of heart, I write happy endings.**

Chapter 36

Even half-way down the hall, he could hear the Christmas music playing from Tea's apartment and the three kids roaring along with the lyrics.

Rebecca shifted her weight from the wall. Her high stiletto pumps clicked together as she turned to face him. For not the first time he wondered what she really looked like beneath the pound of professionally applied false lashes and make-up.

Though he knew for a fact she didn't have a single freckle on her entire body.

Rebecca nudged a long pink thumbnail towards the door. "This is her place, right? What's with the kids?"

"They're her siblings," he said, opting not to mention Mokuba. Sensing how sticky the air had become the moment she noticed him, he wondered if he could just slip past her and into Tea's apartment without a fight.

"That makes sense. Mormons are supposed to breed like rabbits." She sent him a sour, glossy smile. "You ready for that?"

How she already knew all that about Tea, he didn't care to know. "That's really none of your business, Rebecca. Is there a reason why you're hanging outside her apartment like a stalker? No offense." Though he didn't know why he had meant it to come out as such. Wasn't it he the reason Rebecca left the band in the first place? Shouldn't he be groveling?

Rebecca shrugged, as though rolling his words from her shoulders. "You weren't in your apartment. I was about to leave when I heard your voice, followed by the stomping rabble. Oh, I'm not in your way, am I?"

Since she had moved to half cover the door with her body. "Sort of." And since he knew he had no reason for being this rude. "What did you need me for?"

"Just to talk. It's been a while." She dipped her shoulders forward, forcing his attention down to how her leather bustier only half held her perfectly tanned breasts in. "Does she know about me?"

"Yes," said Atem, already uncomfortable.

The smirk she made told him she knew exactly what she was doing.

"Like what you see? I bet you're beyond deprived. Good girls don't give their poor boys much."

His irritation jumped from a simmer to a raging boil. "I don't appreciate the way you're talking about her. If you've only come here to be petty, I'm done. Either move or be moved."

"Oh, move me. Be my guest."

Just as he moved to do that, and none to nicely, Tea opened the door.

For a frosty, stunned second, Tea stood as though stuck in the doorway. As her eyes moved from Rebecca to Atem, any uncertainty snapped and he moved forward. He pushed Rebecca aside and into the apartment.

"I got the tree stand," he said, trying to inject the jovialness he didn't feel.

"Who are you?" Tea asked, albeit politely. "Are the kids being too loud?"

"Oh, I don't live here. Not anymore, at least." Rebecca pinched her thighs together and did a little bow forward, probably to intimidate Tea with the sheer glory of her half-naked chest. "I'm Rebecca. Heard of me?"

The color drained from Tea's face.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, yeah, um…"

"Did Atem tell you why I left the band?" she asked.

Horrified, angry, Atem cut between them and grabbed the door. "This isn't the time," he growled, glaring at her.

But Rebecca just leaned around him to smile at Tea.

Tea lowered a hand that had jerked towards her chest. "He's right. If you want to talk about that, you can call or text me, but not here in front of my siblings."

The noise in the living room had died down, and Atem knew the kids were all ears to know who the weird skimpy stranger was at the door.

Atem nudged Tea back, better blocking Rebecca's view of her.

"Go home and get some clothes on," he said lowly. "Since when do you dress like a scamp?"

Her expression hardened. "Since the man I loved took advantage of me and then threw me to the side. Some would even go so far as to say you raped me."

"That is not true and you know it." he hissed. "You know what I'm like when I'm drunk, _you_ came on to _me_."

"Please, guys, the kids," squeaked Tea, paler than ever.

"I'm more than happy to take this elsewhere." Rebecca straightened, her eyes only for Atem. "I'm not in town for long. Be a dear and get me a drink, won't you Atem? For old time sake?"

"No." He shut the door.

Blasted woman stuck her thick pump out, stopping it and raising her voice. "Girlie, you know what it's like to make love with him? He's quite good at it, but I guess that just comes with practice."

Atem thought about kicking her shoe away, even as the heat flooded his neck and face. "Forget it, I'm not talking to you ever. This is vile."

"No. This is reality. And you're an asshole."

Just as he readied to kick the shoe, it vanished, and the door closed with a loud snap.

Cheery Christmas music filled the quiet like a bawdy drinking song at a funeral.

Atem didn't want to know what Tea looked like right now.

Thankfully, someone had the sense to turn off the now out of place music. "Hey, guys, I have the latest Poke'mon Stadium at my house. Would guys like to come and play it?"

Once more Mokuba showed his good breeding and raising. Atem was going to seriously have a hard time bad-mouthing his producer after this.

"Oh my gosh, can we, Tea?" asked Shea.

"What about the Christmas tree?" asked Trajan. "Why do we have to clear out? It was _his_ slutty ex—ack! Get off me, Shea, you freak! Are you trying to kill me?"

"You're not leaving till Sunday, right?" said Mokuba through the squabble. "You got two days to fill up, and we've been out all day. Let's do something relaxing."

"Yeah, we're going to want something to do those days," said Shea in her uncanny way of sounding older than she really was.

"I can call up Roland," said Mokuba. "Is that alright, Tea?"

"Freak, guys, you're probably hurting her feelings right now, running away like that after all she got us," said Trajan, making a keychain sound like an entire toy store.

Tea surprised him by saying a quiet, clear, "Yeah. I know where you live. Be back by eight."

Atem stepped aside as Mokuba and Shea half dragged Trajan out the door. Just as they managed to get his heels out, he broke free and leveled a haughty finger on Atem.

"Don't go anywhere! I'm beating you black and blue when I come back, perv!"

"Trajan!" Shea cried.

And then the door was shut and Atem found himself in a very cold, very still silence. Wal-mart bags and cheery holiday boxes full of decorations had been scattered across the living room. The tree he and Tea had hauled up there had been set against the wall, waiting for the stand that he still held under his arm, so he started with walking in and setting it on the counter.

"I'm really sorry about that, Tea. I had no idea she'd…I sort of ruined everything, didn't I?"

"No," she said, still not looking at him. "They were talking about going to Moki's house before you came here. I had already mentioned to them that I was too tired to do any decorating. You've done nothing wrong."

"Not now, I haven't." Cold and hot all at once, he ran a sweaty palm through his hair. "But the way you're acting right now makes me think you hold my past actions against me."

"No," and she sounded faint now, ghost-like. "No, it's not that."

"Then what is it? Look, she doesn't mean anything to me, she never did. I don't even remember much of what happened, you know how I am when I'm drunk."

"Yeah." And she finally seemed to come to life as she moved towards a lone, bright red sofa she had found off Craigslist. She didn't drop herself into it, but lowered herself tenderly, as though aware she had turned to glass. The color had yet to return to her face, and as Atem came near, he thought he could see the old darkness of the past few weeks. Except this time she was open with it, not waiting for a moment when she thought no one was looking to fall into her less pleasant thoughts.

He crouched down in front of her to meet her bowed gazed. "Talk to me, Tea." He put a hand on her knee.

Rather than meet his eyes, she stared down at the hand touching her.

"I've been stupid, Atem. I'm sorry."

He frowned at her thin tone. "What for?"

She closed her eyes and breathed deep through her nose. "This was never going to work."

His insides clenched, taught and cold. "Tea, Rebecca being a bitch doesn't change anything. She's not going to hurt you, and I'm not going to go off and sleep with someone."

"What if you're drunk?" She was looking straight at him now, arresting his gaze with a sure, raw strength. "What if you're drunk and not alone? What if you're famous and at a party surrounded by fans and beautiful people who have no problem with being laid? Who would even think it the luckiest day of their lives to catch you like that?"

"That won't happen. Tea, I'll keep you safe, you don't have to be afraid."

"And I'm not stupid." It wasn't spoken with anger, but in the bland way any unwanted truth was spoken. "I'm not stupid to think you'd change everything just because I'm with you. People change because they want to, for themselves, because it's something they want deep in their gut. Not because their current girlfriend doesn't agree."

He snapped up straight, stiff with electricity. "I hate it when you talk about yourself like that, like you are just a passing fancy. Have I ever given you any reason to think that I'm not absolutely crazy about you?"

"It's quite common to be crazy about your girlfriend," she said, still in the bland, light voice, and staring up at him with those hard, glacier eyes. "I'm not aiming for a good boyfriend, Atem. I'm not even aiming to be a good girlfriend. I'm aiming for eternity, and there is only one man who can qualify for that. I was a fool to jeopardize something so important just because…because of my own feelings. I've been…bad."

Blood flushed out from the tense chill he had become, prickling his neck with sudden sweat. He clenched his hands at his side.

"Oh, so that's what I am?" he snarled. "A bad choice? A sin? Why, because I happened to have had sex while I was drunk?"

"I didn't say that," she said quickly.

"You might as well have. Calling yourself stupid and bad for choosing to be with me, how do you think that makes me feel?" And from the ugly, smarting place within him he spat out the words he knew would hurt her the most. "Why can't you think before you talk? Maybe I'll go kill myself now."

It was as though he had thrown a boulder at her. The glacier strength of her gaze shattered and she started to shake.

Even as guilt fought to make its way through his rage, he said, "And please don't fall apart like you did when you found porn on my phone."

"I'm not going to," she said, low and steady. "And I never meant for you to see that."

"Oh, well I did, and guess what? It made me feel like the worst scum in the world, and now you're just verifying that I am. Well, I'm sorry, I don't think there's anything wrong with sex. If you'd just stopped being so afraid of it, maybe you'd see there wasn't anything horrible or sinful about it either."

Now she was standing up too, and even though her hands shook, the steel in her gaze was back harder than ever and on fire.

"Sex is sacred and beautiful, that's why they call it love making. Just because I want to save that for my spouse and don't give it away like free tissues does not mean I'm afraid of it. I treasure it, and that's why—that's why what Rebecca said felt like being stabbed."

And even as she said that, her steady, sure voice shook and her steely eyes, though hot with conviction, shone with tears.

His self-righteous indignation faltered.

"Sex is so important to me," she continued. "That it hurts—it hurts more than I can even say-but you will probably never understand. You'll probably never know, and I was stupid enough to date you and think that maybe it wouldn't affect me, that I'd be okay. But I'm not." The tears were pouring out now, dripping off her face. "I thought I could be okay with you drinking yourself stupid or how horrible it would feel whenever I knew you had been drunk and how scared, how insecure it makes me feel whenever your stressed or struggling because I know where you'll go to cope—I thought I'd be fine with the fact that you didn't know God like I did and wouldn't be able to share the happiness I feel when I talk of Him and sing of Him and delight in the only Daddy I have who has stuck with me through thick and thin."

"Tea…" Oh crap, he knew where this was going.

"But I'm not okay." She had looked to the ceiling now, holding her shoulders back and clenching her teeth hard to hold back the sobs. "I'm not okay. I hurt. So. Much. I tried to take care of it, I tried to figure it out, but I was just trying to avoid the inevitable." She dropped her chin and met his eyes again. "Atem, you can't take me to the temple or back to my Daddy. You can't help me raise the kind of family I've been desperately dreaming of. You just hurt me. I'm done."

She reached up around her neck, fingers on the clasps of her necklace. "I'm sorry for being stupid and cruel."

He reached out to stop her hands, but she shrugged him off. "Tea, don't do this. I'm sorry, I said the totally wrong things, you should have told me how you felt earlier. We can fix this."

She wagged her head from side to side. "No. I need to stop doing this to you." She unclasped the rosegold necklace and handed it to him. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I ever came into your life. I've done nothing good for you. It would have been better if I had just kept my mouth closed, back at the hotel, and after that."

He pushed the necklace back towards her, even as he thought his chest my cave in. "No. I told you it was a gift. It's yours."

Her face twisted up, and it wasn't pretty. "But it was expensive."

He just pushed it back till her hands hit her chest and stepped back.

"Don't be sorry," he said, hollow, hollow, hollow.

And because he knew if he spoke another word it would all come out like vomit, he turned around and left her there, alone and pale in her Christmas scattered apartment.


	37. Dropped Back

**Forwarning: a bit of some scary stuff ensues. I promise, nothing graphic.**

 **Are you guys enjoying your Christmas present? :) I've worked hard for it just for you. ^.^ With love.**

Chapter 37

Rebecca was waiting for him back in his apartment.

"Do I want to know how you got in here?" he asked. Numb. Hollow. Numb.

She smirked and brought up a finger, where a single, silver key hung. "Bakura."

"Since when have you and Bakura been on good terms?"

"Since last night." She started to spin the key's ring about her finger, sauntering towards him. All that he could register about her was that she was shorter than Tea, smaller, without those lightly freckled long legs.

"Looks like things didn't end well," she said.

Atem just looked at her. So numb.

Until she slid her arms over his shoulders.

He shoved her away.

"Get out."

She pouted at him. "I almost fell over. That wasn't very nice."

"Get out."

Her expression darkened, eyes flashing within their holes of mascara and lashes. "What's happened to you, Atem? When did you become such a jerk?"

"Maybe I was always a jerk," he spat.

"No, you weren't. You were sweet and sincere and cute. This isn't cute at all. Did she do this to you?"

In answer, he stepped towards her and snatched the key from her fingers. At the same time, he took her by the arm and shoved her towards the door.

"You've done this to me," he said, before opening the door, shoving her out, and closing it again with a chink of the deadbolt lock. In a rush of feeling he did the chain lock and the switch lock on the doorknob as well.

Then he went back to his bedroom and fell face first into his bed.

He didn't know how long he spent like that, drifting in and out of a sort of half-consciousness, not sure what to think or what had just happened to him. Once the shock wore off, though, he found himself sour with bitterness and rage.

Did she just dump him because of God?

Filled with a sudden zing of energy, he went to his music room and did some unfair pounding on the piano. The music that came out was heavy, clanging with unplanned sharps and flats that didn't get along, and loud. When he picked up his cello he bowed so hard he made mediocre mistakes, like playing more than one string at once when he hadn't meant to and scraping across the bridge.

Then he went to the glass case of his fine, decorative Irish flute and snapped the instrument in half.

A few days passed like that, bouncing between hurt rage and numbness. He hardly saw her during practice, as his vision would blur over with a buzzing red. Joey and Bakura had the mind to not comment on it and just did their job.

And when he drank, he did it with a vengeance. He could sleep without guilt now, he told himself. He could tell the giants on the horizon, with guilt and regret in their hands, to fuck it.

Mai's call on Sunday evening was the peak of it all.

"I've scheduled you for an AAA meeting tomorrow night." Her tone was cold and flat.

"What for?" he growled.

"Don't give me that shit, I've been watching Tea mope around for the past month while dating you and now I just caught her bawling so hard in her apartment she can hardly breathe. You've fucked up, now it's time to go to the doc and get your issues fixed."

He inflated with apocalyptic fury. "Oh, so that's what she told you?"

"She hardly said anything, thank you."

"Well then how about you use your eyes for a change and see what she's done to me?"

"I have," said Mai with a deadly, venomous fury. "You actually made it to all your morning appointments, could remember everything, made the fastest rocket launch in music history from zero to hero, your music actually doesn't suck, and you've reconnected with your grandpa and mother after ignoring them for a year and half. And what have you done for her?"

"You don't understand a thing—"

" _You_ don't, you stupid drunk, so get to that AAA meeting Monday or I'm calling Kaiba!"

A vicious beeping told Atem Mai had hung up.

An hour later, Bakura and Joey walked through his apartment door, uninvited, to find Atem all but screaming at the unfairness of it all. He'd done quite a bit of throwing pillows around and tearing off his shirt, and he could tell Joey was trying very hard not to laugh.

Bakura, however, marched straight into the living room where Atem stood, snarling, to push a bottle of Atem's favorite mango and grape flavored rum into his chest.

"Bitches, right?"

Atem stared at the bottle, then Bakura, before putting a hand to his face to hide the sudden tears. For some reason, his anger had snapped at the sight of his friends and the pitiful agony he had been putting off all this time washed over him in waves.

Tea didn't want him. She had said he had been a mistake.

Bakura took back the cool bottle, not saying anything. Joey, however, must have sensed the emotional crisis overcoming Atem and came around to throw an arm over Atem's shoulders.

"It's okay, man, be as PMSy as you want. We're here for you."

Atem pushed his hand into his eyes so hard he saw stars. "I bought her a ring." His voice came out choked.

"Shit," said Joey.

"That was dumb," said Bakura.

"No one needs your opinion," said Joey.

"No," interjected Atem, falling backwards onto his couch which he had kicked into his coffee table earlier out of rage. "It was dumb. But…"

As one, Joey and Bakura fell onto the couch on either side of him. For some reason, the warmth of their bodies next to him made the tears come out harder, and he nearly bent in half to hide them.

"But you still wanted it," said Joey, softly.

Atem just nodded, not trusting his voice.

"Hate to tell you so, but—ow!"

Joey had reached over Atem to slap Bakura upside the head. "You got the booze, so I'll do the talking."

"No, it's fine," croaked Atem. "Bakura was right."

"As I was saying, but what made you realize that?" Bakura leaned back on the couch, and Atem heard the sound of the rum sloshing around as he adjusted the bottle.

"She dumped me because of her religion."

"No way," said Joey, sounding honestly surprised. "Why? She was always so cool with everyone else's beliefs."

"Because God said no," said Bakura with a snort. "I was trying to tell you from the beginning. She's a self-righteous saint who thinks we're nothing but dirty, lascivious sinners promised to hell. Probably doesn't want Atem spoiling her purity."

"I don't know…" said Joey, sounding uncomfortable.

"That's why you don't date girls who are in a cult," added Bakura, and Atem heard a pop of the cork. Bakura must have gotten out his pocket knife to do the honors. "Now, we all need to get drunk, call over some pretty girls, and pound out this stupid part of our lives forever."

And since Joey had been the one to originally suggest drunken wantonness, and Atem was too beaten to be anything other than a fallen leaf in the winds of their whims, the rum was open, alcohol was thrown back, and something loud and banging was blared out of Atem's first grade, surround sound speakers.

Before he knew it he was sobbing like a freak on Joey's shoulder. Then Joey was sobbing and blubbering with him. Bakura just cackled. Then they were all yelling insults at women that would have gotten them thrown in jail anywhere else. They were soon so caught up in being drunk and angry that they forgot about calling up girls or even heading out to the club to get properly sloshed as Atem suggested sometime later.

Atem felt it all. Then threw it all out. He tore into Tea, spouting all the thoughts he had tucked away and ignored, and Bakura happily joined him. Joey was much more hesitant, but didn't resist laughing at his friends more crude references.

Tea hadn't been good for him. Tea had made him feel guilty for who he was, even while saying she accepted him. Tea had called him wicked and wrong. Tea hadn't really loved him, just passively going with the flow to take advantage of him, or to get some action, or just to feel 'good.' And now the little tight-ass religious freak had tossed him aside like garbage because her Church wouldn't let her marry him in some building, or because she thought he would contaminate their children.

"Hell, she'd contaminate _your_ children," said Bakura, who had somehow gotten hold of a bottle of whiskey through it all. "Raise them all to be judgmental, homophobic assholes."

"Like you'd 'ven want kids," slurred Joey, who was slumped over the arm of Atem's couch with a red solo cup held limply in his fingers. "Kids schmids. Poop and butts and kids"

"And did I tell you about when she found porn on my phone?" Atem felt his tongue slipping in his mouth.

"Yeah, and she totally flipped out on you?"

"Over pictures!"

"Porn," moaned Joey, lifting his cup into the air. "Yay porn! Titties. I like titties."

"How'd she ever make you feel loved?" crowed Bakura, lifting his whiskey into the air too. "Bitch all the way! Never giving you anything while you gave everything, then saying it wasn't enough!"

"Yeah!" Atem lifted up his bottle of rum, because apparently they were doing some kind of cheer. "Bitch!"

"Bitch," grumbled Joey, head still slung backwards over the couch. "Bitchy bitch bi-t-chheee. 'Tem, your door's pretty nice. Like'ta 've wood."

"Go home, drunk." Bakura said, sneering.

"I ain't drunk," Joey flung his arms around like a dolls, forgetting he still held the cup. Luckily, he had finished whatever was inside and the plastic cup crashed harmlessly into the window curtains.

"Goal!" crowed Atem, melting onto the floor face first, because the rug had been asking for it. It wasn't nearly as soft as it had said it was. "Wha'v 'bout 'bitches?"

"Okay, you're both done. Come on, Joey. Bedtime."

"Hee hee, boobs. 'Tem, yer door has boobs. Nuuuu, I don't wanna go! I wanna with 'Tem and the boob door!"

"Then get to bed, dipshit. You're done."

"Boobieeees!"

Atem laughed, rolling onto his side. He could still remember what hurt him, but it seemed so distant now. Why had he been so upset? Life was fine. It was going to be fine. There were boobs on his door.

He tried tracing out other boobs in his carpet and in the side of his coffee table, but had to stop to go pee. The golden fountain went on forever in the toilet, but then it was done and he was trying to remember what he had been doing before then. Everything was overly bright and euphoric. Had his bathroom ever looked so pretty? Tiles were nice. Oo, the floor in his hallway was nice too. This was a great apartment.

Bakura was there. Atem's bedroom behind him. Atem squinted into the darkness.

"Dark," he murmured. "I've got a really nice apartment."

"Sure you do," said Bakura, but his mouth was moving funny. Atem started squinting at it too. "Party time's done, Pharaoh."

"Done? Naw. Still got to find the boobies." He snorted and giggled. That was right. Joey had found boobs on his door. He wanted to see them too. Suddenly nothing sounded better then touching some boobs.

But even as he thought that, he abruptly plummeted from his euphoric fun into a really dark place he didn't like.

"Tea wouldn't like this," he whispered.

"Oh god, not that shit again," moaned Bakura. "That's it, come on. To the couch."

Atem let Bakura grab his shirt and start pulling him. He stumbled along, but he kept upright. Tears had filled his eyes again and suddenly nothing sounded better than curling up on that rug again and sobbing himself to death.

Bakura pushed him back onto the couch. For a moment, Atem's world was in free fall, and it reminded him of another time when he had been like this, drunk, and Tea had her willowy cool shoulders beneath his arm in the darkness. He hadn't known which way was up or down, but he had known the way towards her.

"I'm shit," he sobbed. "I want her back. I want her to marry me."

The couch cushion creaked as Bakura put a knee besides him. Atem felt another hard knee squeezing itself between him and the couch's back cushions.

And he was looking up at Bakura through tears. His white mane came about his shoulder and tickled his throat.

The voice Bakura spoke in next surprised him, as it was the rare voice, the one Bakura used when he wasn't trying to be a dick all the time. The honest one.

"You poor thing."

The white hair, scratchy and smooth all at once, pulled about his neck and something hot and soft pressed against Atem's mouth. He couldn't really see anything clearly at that point, so he just closed his eyes as even more warmth settled over him like a blanket.

And he floated. Softness beneath, warmth above, raw and exhausted and spent, like a hungry child with their mouth open to a merciless sky.

Then the warmth on his mouth moved and he realized Bakura was kissing him. Bakura was nearly laying on him, straddling him, coaxing his lips to move with his.

For a second, he let it happen. It felt nice to be acted on. To not have to move. It had been so long since he'd had another body to warm his, another body that cared and wanted him.

The next, he seized up, as thought lightening had struck him. An overwhelming sense of wrongness boiled up in him, spiking him with a precious flash of sobriety.

He didn't want this.

He pushed at Bakura, who only moved back reluctantly, eyes dark with want.

"It's alright, Pharaoh," he breathed, puffing whiskey scented breath into Atem's face. "I won't take advantage of you. This isn't like Rebecca. It's all going to be okay."

"I'm straight," he pushed out. It was hard when his body felt like lead and he suddenly felt so cold.

"Have you ever even tried it with a guy?" Bakura leaned back in, brushing his lips across Atem's. "Just try it. I'll pleasure you to sleep, make you forget all about it. It's okay."

Bakura backed off. But he didn't get off of Atem. Rather his fingers went to the button of Atem's pants.

Alarms were going off, spikes of irregular sobriety bouncing in and out of the twisting world.

"I don't want this," said Atem again.

"It's okay," soothed Bakura, even as Atem felt his buckle being undone.

"No, seriously, this is wrong."

"You've been with Tea far too long."

When he felt Bakura's fingers, the shock jolted him back into a sitting position, unsettling Bakura. Where before Atem had welcomed the sluggish, distant feeling, now he found himself trapped by it. He could hardly focus, couldn't think straight, couldn't get his body to move like he wanted to. It seemed an eternity before he could get his feet onto the floor.

"No," he heard himself mumble. "No, don't. Stop."

He stumbled to his feet, saw black, and put a hand to the couch. Once it cleared he started his tottering way towards his bedroom, the jolts of wrongness spiking through with each step. He could feel each breath in his throat, felt his stomach clenching.

At the last minute, he managed to get to the bathroom and the toilet, where his body fought to purge itself of the toxins.

He sensed more than saw Bakura watching.

Then he flushed, curled up on his fluffy bathroom mat, and passed out.


	38. Indifferent

**I'm sorry I missed yesterdays update! We went to my inlaws for Christmas and the internet didn't work there. It's working today though! So you'll have two updates. ^.^**

 **And I don't know how to get stupid fanfiction to put the paragraph spaces where I want them, so I hope this song makes sense.**

Chapter 38

 _You told me never to compromise,_

 _That I was good despite what God says_

 _And even if I stand alone, at the end,_

 _There'd be enough goodness for me saved._

* * *

 _-chorus:_

 ** _But now it's all different_**

 ** _Because heaven went off course,_**

 ** _And I'm the one who's meant to change_**

 ** _Even though you are the source._**

 ** _The source of my indifference_**

* * *

 _You told me to stay on course_

 _Because every day you saw my strength_

 _But now I'm crumbling at the drop_

 _That keeps you at arm's length._

 _You told me to not mince my words_

 _Even though they caused you pain._

 _And now it bites me in the ass_

 _Because you don't feel the same._

 ** _(chorus)_**

 _Are we so different?_

 _That now you have to leave?_

 _I'm not different._

 _And I know that's just who you are._

 _Can't it be okay?_

 _That we're so different?_

 _Or is this the blame_

 _Waiting for me from the start?_

 ** _(chorus)_**

 _You told me that you loved me?_

 _Is that still the same?_

 _Because I still want you_

 _Different or how you came._


	39. A Call To Logic

**Make sure you check out yesterday's update! And Merry Christmas!**

Chapter 39

Atem found a package for him on his kitchen counter when his miserable, hung over self oozed in around two in the afternoon. It was a plain little white box, without an address or postage, just his name in curling sharpie. When he opened it, he found a white note card and a little dark blue book titled "The Book of Mormon; Another Testament of Jesus Christ."

Wrinkling his nose, he turned over the note card.

 _"I'm sorry I didn't give this to you earlier. I didn't want you to feel like I was pushing my religion on you or that I was preaching to you or wanted you to change. Since things can't get much worse, I figured it was about time. Please read it."_

 _Love, Tea_

He got stuck between wanting to throw down the card like it was on fire and never letting go. He stared at the word 'love' for longer than should have been sane, then put the card back, closed up the box, and went to his bedroom to tuck it into a corner he could forget. There he found Joey, sprawled across his bed and snoring. A brush of warmth touched the gaping rawness he had been since awakening. He grabbed a blanket and curled up on a chair to work up the motivation to wake Joey up. The darkness of his bedroom, rumbling with Joey's gentle snores, had a sort of ambience to it that comforted him.

As he sat there, his eyes found the little, gauze wrapped box on his nightstand. He stared at it for a long time.

He should probably return that. It had cost a fair penny. Maybe he could go do that today.

Suddenly the thought of facing the saleslady who had praised his decision made him feel sick. He almost noticed too late that he actually was sick and nearly upset his lounge chair in getting to the bathroom in time.

As tears rolled down his face from the force of his vomiting, a hopeless, dreadful realization took him.

He didn't like this. He didn't want his life to be like this, empty, blurred over and surreal mixed with moments of stinging clarity and vomiting. He didn't want to feel the thirst for booze. He didn't want to live the rest of his life running from the monsters and giants in his mind. He didn't want this life, where he lived for the high and grit his teeth through the lows. He didn't want to just grow old and die doing the same thing he was doing now. He didn't want to learn how to live without Tea's sun and find someone else. He didn't want to make music to the minaret or to anything else inside of him, because what was the point? What was the point to the music anymore? All it did was bring him more of the same thing: this. Puking in a toilet, waiting to get laid, watching for a new fun ride, a new high lifted up by the roaring ocean of the crowd.

He remembered the evenings spent in his music room with Tea and he had to clutch his chest from the pain of it. It had been…heaven, if such a thing existed.

As though set on torturing him, his mind brought up other memories. Memories all filled with that warm, uprush of joy and sense of well-being like those summer nights spent next to his grandfather, hearing stories of the stars and just talking. Mexican sodas. Late night drives. The sense that his life was just beginning, and that what was ahead was exciting, even an adventure.

Was this it, then? Was this really the best life had to offer?

For one of the first times in his life, he actually considered ending it all. He actually liked the idea of dying. What was the point of staying alive, anyways? Even if it tore up Joey and Bakura, or even Tea, what was the point? Their hurt wouldn't change anything. They'd just live it up and die anyways, just like him.

He threw up acid, then let his head hang there on the cool porcelain.

For some reason, the book Tea had given him floated through his mind.

That was stupid. How would religion change anything?

In answer, Tea's words floated across his mind.

' _…and delight in the only Daddy I have who has stuck with me through thick and thin_.'

He snorted at that. What had that to do with anything? His brain must be scrambled from hangover.

Some peptol bismol. Some Advil. A cup of too sweet coffee. The number of missed calls on his phone that he interpreted as he didn't want to leave his apartment today, triple A meeting be damned. Putting a bottle of rum away. A thought to the whereabouts of Bakura and why he hadn't crashed in his house like Joey. Wondering when he could dare a meal again.

He was slowly and lazily picking up the wreck that was his living room when another thing Tea had said crossed his mind.

 _'…and I care because all He wants for me is to be happy, not to mention He's the only reason I'm even here.'_

Had Tea gone through the same thing he was going through now? Had she thought of suicide as the only way out at some point?

He threw a pillow onto the couch, suddenly angry. If God only helped when you were about to commit suicide, screw it. He didn't need that load of crap. Besides, what could a being that didn't even talk to you help change the fact that life was a pointless circle of pain and drunkenness and need? How could knowing you could float up to heaven and play harps as a naked baby in the clouds help or change anything?

And she had left him for that.

He chucked another pillow. Retarded. All of it.

So he didn't go to his triple A meeting. Instead he woke up Joey and ate Wheaties while they played video games late into the night. Bakura never dropped by, though he answered their texts with his usual snark of having healthy hobbies unlike the rest of them, which probably meant he was reading one of his gruesome novels again. Joey didn't mention Tea, and neither did Atem, nor did he mention Mai's dozen or so missed calls.

The next day he had another meeting with his fitness trainer. He actually found himself enjoying it without Mai hovering over his shoulder to give him a hard time. She hadn't turned up at all that morning, and all three of them took it as an improvement. The three of them even made plans to head to a club that night and have a good time while they walked inside the apartment complex laughing and flinging each other's arms over the other's shoulders.

Yet the laughter didn't reach deep enough to rub out the cold inside him; the impression of the pointlessness of it all. Bakura and Joey might someday leave too, for whatever reason. If not leave, they'd die. Play, goof off, get some ass, drink, party, sing for their worshipers, wallow in the glory—

And go home to the empty abyss where no joy came from looking up at the stars.

He had just closed the door to his apartment when his phone rang with the message that a ride was waiting for him up front. Confused, he went back downstairs and out the door, just to freeze at the sight of the white limo. A chauffeur with the bright, caligraphied 'KC' on the right breast of his shirt bowed.

"Mr. Kaiba requests an audience with you at your earliest convenience," he said in a perfect, pleasant calm.

Atem's blood went cold. This could only mean one thing.

But why so soon? Hadn't their band been blowing the charts? Why would Kaiba want to cut him off now? Or was it to slit his throat and drop him in a gutter somewhere for compromising his business with his alcohol problems? In a lot of ways, Kaiba reminded him of a ruthless gang boss.

"Should I take some time to write a will?" Atem said, trying at a joke.

The chauffeur's practiced smile didn't even twitch. "I just do as my employer requests. If you have nothing pressing to attend to, I suggest we be on our way."

And since Atem had been feeling suicidal anyways, he got into the car.

The limo stopped at an almost empty level of a parking garage. Atem hadn't spent too much attention on where they were going, only recognizing the shape of the towering monolith which was Kaiba Corps headquarters. Kind of hard to miss along the skyline, even if you hadn't worked under there. Atem followed the driver into a sleek, futuristic looking elevator that closed its doors in almost complete silence. He could just barely hear the hiss of the motor working up the cables.

On the 89th floor, one floor away from the 90th and the roof, the door slid back open and his guide stepped to the side, head bowed.

"Straight ahead, through the glass doors, you'll find Mr. Kaiba."

"Uh, thanks?" Was that really something he should be thanking the guy for?

The moment he was out of the elevator, the door whispered closed behind him, leaving him alone in the quiet hallway that displayed just how far the city was beneath him from its long, lengthwise glass wall. A few potted ferns flourished in the sunlight. Through the glass doors at the end of the hall, Atem could make out Kaiba's perfectly done brunette head turned towards two, large, nearly paper thin monitors.

He contemplated what it might be like to fall from this height as he walked down and opened the door with clammy hands.

"Take a seat," said Kaiba without looking up. His pale fingers danced over a keyboard.

Atem took the black, rather severe looking chair in front of Kaiba's desk and sat down, putting his hands over his knees so they wouldn't shake.

After a tense few minutes, Kaiba drew back from his keyboard, clicked something on the screen with his mouse, then swiveled in Atem's direction, resting his chin on his woven fingers.

"Tea Gardner just called me asking for an early cancelation of her contract due to mitigating circumstances. Care to tell me what you did? Besides skip your triple A meeting. Yes, Mai's filled me in on the reasons for that."

A spark of indignation moved him. "Why does everyone keep assuming it's my fault?"

"Because you were stupid enough to get into a relationship with her when it's obvious she's out of your league," said Kaiba, as though stating the wrong choice of wallpaper to a bathroom.

Atem blanched. It was one thing when her mother said that to him, all apologetic and with the disclaimer that she might just think no man is worthy of her daughter. It was another thing to be told that by his aloof, unfeeling, tactless producer who held all the strings of his entire music career.

It was like being stabbed with a knife and twisting it.

"Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I'm out of her league?" he found himself saying.

Kaiba snorted. A dry, short, unpleasant sound.

"Let me make something very clear." Kaiba leaned back in his chair, folded hands lowering to his chest. "I don't need you, Sennen. I could find talent like yours by blinking, and non-boozed up talent as well. But I need her. In one month—ONE month—she turned a so-so band into an instant hit, and even if she hadn't, she could play in any band, with any instrument, at a moment's notice, and play whatever I need her to as long as I have a recording, and maybe not even that."

Atem stayed silent. He just kept looking at Kaiba's hands, thinking about the sensation of free falling. The roof was only two floors up.

"I was under the impression you were hopelessly in love with this woman," continued Kaiba. "So what did you do to screw it up?"

"Since when were other people's relationships your business?" asked Atem, not even feeling the anger he had meant the words to convey.

"Since I had 30.5 million dollars already invested into the next six months of their career."

Atem flinched and stared. Seto Kaiba met it head on without so much as a twitch.

"Also," he said, again in that tone of scolding a wrong choice of interior design, "She is the only friend my wife has been able to make in the past ten years. What's the point of all my success and money if I can't fulfill my wife's simple request to look into it?"

It was probably the surprise of hearing Kaiba speak so matter-of-fact about his devotion to his wife, when he hadn't so much as whispered about his family before Tea's involvement, that moved Atem to say the words.

"She dumped me because of her religion."

Another creak of the chair as Kaiba crossed a leg over the other. "So, your sleeping around and drunkenness caught up with you?"

Atem glared, but was too beaten down to put much effort into it.

"So what are you going to do about it?" Seto asked.

Atem huffed. "What is there to do? It wouldn't fix anything if I converted and pretended to be all repentant to a god I don't think is there. I couldn't do that to Tea or myself."

"Why wouldn't you be repentant? God or no god."

"Because I don't think what I did was wrong," said Atem automatically. The words came out of him without effort, as though Kaiba had them by the string and was just pulling them out. His mind was floating elsewhere, falling down the building, meeting the bottom, sleeping…god, he was so tired.

"What if what you did was wrong?"

Atem blinked at him. "What do you mean?"

"Say everything she has said is true. What if her God of her religion is the real deal? What would you do then?"

Atem had to laugh, dry and hollow. "That's funny." But Seto was looking at him with dead seriousness. "It isn't."

"How do you know?"

"Because it just isn't. It's ridiculous. Do you believe in God? Let alone a God like that who would shatter relationships just because someone drank something bad or messed around. Or what about that whole anti-homo stuff? Or did she not tell you about that?"

Seto Kaiba rolled his eyes. "I'm not arguing religion with you. I don't need God to tell me what is right, because I already know. And I don't think it's too farfetched that sex would be that important. It does make people. That's the power of creation right there. No, what I'm trying to get you to do is use logic and reasoning, however little is in your head. So, answer the question."

Atem blinked again, still confused. "Whether there's a God?"

"No. What would you do if it was true?"

"Her religion?"

Seto Kaiba gave a loud huff of irritation and his gaze sharpened to searing knives.

"There's a 95% chance you're leaving this office as a homeless nobody if you can't prove you can use your brain."

Atem threw up his hands, alarm bringing him back to the office with a snap. "Okay! I'd do it! If it was true, I'd do it. Omniscient, all loving God and all that just wants me to be unimaginably happy and probably knows a little more about it than me, what's so bad about that?"

A bell like chime came from the computer and Seto swiveled around to it. He clicked on an icon and opened a message. Even as his eyes scanned left to right over the words, he asked, "Then why haven't you bothered to figure out if it's true?"

Atem wrinkled his nose. "Are you sure you're not Mormon? Because this sounds a lot like religious coercion."

"I'm not affiliated with any religion. Like I said, it's just logic. If this religion is so wonderful that she is willing to lose you along with millions of dollars, and not only that, but to humiliate herself by sticking up for standards that no one understands and keep sticking to them even when she is persecuted and ridiculed for it," Seto twisted back, pinning Atem with another knife like stare. "Why haven't you tried to figure out if it's true? Or do you not care about her enough to see if she's going through all that hardship for nothing?"

The rock star couldn't believe his ears. He just gawked at Kaiba.

Kaiba looked down at his watch impatiently, even though there was a clock on his computer. "You got thirty seconds before a new hobo hits the streets."

"But there's no way," said Atem. "There's no way to find out whether a religion is true or not, else everyone would believe it. How would I even begin to look let alone know for sure? Why does it even matter whether it's true or not?"

"You really are an idiot." Kaiba pulled up another window and pressed a button by his phone. "Daniel."

" _Yes, Mr. Kaiba?"_

"Send up Johnson for Atem."

" _Will do."_

Seto Kaiba turned back to his computer window, fingers once more flying. "I'll throw you one last rope, Sennen. Is Ms. Gardner worth knowing the truth?"

Atem's thoughts whirled. Of course she was, but it had jumped to something else. If he found it was true…pfft, yeah, whatever possibility that was. But what if he found out it wasn't? Then he could take what evidence he had found and present it to Tea, perhaps persuade her that she could still find the happiness she looked for with him.

For some reason, that later thought didn't cheer him as much as he thought it would.

"Yes," he said.

Kaiba sent him a tight smile without looking away from the screen. "Good boy. See that I don't lose 30 and a half million dollars after New Years."

"You know it depends on what she wants, right? I can only do so much."

"Go away, already. The sound of your idiocy is giving me a headache."

As though on cue, the glass doors open and the driver which had brought Atem there appeared, that perfect, polite smile still on his face.

"Mr. Atem, if you would come this way."

On the way to the elevator, Atem didn't look out the glass wall and the fall below once.


	40. Seeking Truth

**MERRY CHRISTMAS! :D**

 **Today marks the end of my update a day Christmas gift. So please, let me know what you think of the story so far. ^.^ I am quite anxious to know, both for the better and for the worst.**

Chapter 40

How did you go about finding out if something was true?

He tried out Google and got so many voices on complete opposite sides of the spectrum, both with ambivalent proof, that he ended up slamming it close out of frustration. Didn't a high school teacher tell him to not believe everything you read on the internet anyways? He had gotten a D on a paper just because of that. Apparently books were more true than the internet, just because there was a more rigorous process of scrutiny—yeah right.

The thought of books pointed his mind towards the little blue book Tea had given him. He thought about it for a moment, then decided the stress was too much and opened up his fridge for a beer.

When he uncapped it and readied to take his first sip, however, he found himself staring down at it until condensation left a little pool on his counter. He was thirsty, yes, but he was reluctant to go back into the haze, and for some reason he knew if he took the first sip of that beer, he wouldn't stop until he passed out.

And his heart still hammered a hard, painful beat of hope against his chest.

He didn't want this. He didn't want to drink. He didn't want to live like that.

With a sudden rush of disgust, he poured the entire beer down his sink. Then he opened up his fridge and went to dumping out every bottle of alcohol he could find, one by one. The yeasty smell of alcohol dug into his nose and made his throat hurt.

Then he threw out the bottles, imagining each one as a pillar that separated him from Tea and held him down to the hazy, euphoric, vomiting prison.

 _And what if it was true?_

He shook that thought away. It was the epiphany of impossible. Kaiba was crazy.

He had to go to a tech rehearsal after that, costumes included. Joey jokingly congratulated him on his sobriety, but Bakura only rolled his eyes. Atem couldn't help but feel that his pianist had grown distant from them, even though he sat their sneering and cracking crude jokes as usual while they were doing their hair.

Then he glanced at Tea, seeing her without that red film for the first time.

She didn't smile. She had circles under her eyes, and her hairstylist had long ago given up on conversation.

 _Do you not care about her enough to see if she's going through all that hardship for nothing?_

A hot pang of guilt twisted through him. He really hadn't done anything for her, had he? He hadn't kept her safe from the beginning.

And then he remembered the awful words he had said when they had broken up and looked away, afraid he might start groveling next to her chair if he kept looking.

But it just kept coming. Examples of all the things she had done for him and ways she had improved his life, and then all the examples of how he hadn't done the same for hers. He couldn't even use the excuse that she had gotten a chance in the music business because of him, because he had been the most reluctant to bring her into the band. And as Kaiba said, she would have been swept up by any band. They had just had the fortune of her appearing on their doorstep and not someone else's.

Ugh, his stomach was killing him. All this crappy self-worthlessness affirmations were getting to him.

Then they were all together, walking to the plane of light of the stage. Colors blended into a sheer white until his eyes adjusted and he could see the darkness beyond the light spreading out like an ocean, yawning towards the stage. His various gold bracelets gleamed in time with the sheen of his cello.

"Oy, Atem, you there?"

He came back to Earth with a crash. Joey tapped his snare drum impatiently, and Bakura played the same triplet with a droll stare.

"Wh-what?"

"Seriously?" Joey chucked a stick at him, missing him by a good foot. "We've played the opening to _Minarets_ twice now. I can't believe you. This is going to be the biggest concert of our career and you're a total space cadet? Was I wrong? Have you really been drinking?"

"No, I'm completely sober, I swear! I just…Kaiba called me up yesterday and sort of…gave me a lot to think about."

That got their attention. Even Tea looked up from her guitar to give him a set of raised, concerned eyebrows.

"He didn't threaten to fire you, did he?" she asked.

Warmth pricked his heart and he managed to give her a smile. He could at least attempt to be pleasant for her.

"Don't you know him by now? That's all Kaiba does." He jerked his bow across his cello, sounding a bright, loud zing. "I'm really sorry, guys. Promise I won't do it again. Give us a count, Joey?"

"Alright, but I will cut you if you break that."

Joey took up another drumstick and begun the clicks.

Atem threw himself into the music. His strained, tired mind readily focused on the notes, even though his fingering felt sluggish and he winced more than once, though it wasn't till he started to sing that he began to be shaken by the sound. For some reason, it felt as though a long silence was being broken, and he took the first real breath he had for a week.

 _"Round the coals of your desire,_

 _Because no one ever cared_

 _For the heat of your fire."_

At least it felt that way. He had always been known to be passionate. Everything he set his heart to he did passionately, loving it all the way, fighting through for better or for worse. That's why when he decided he had to know his father, to know why he had left so early and whether he would even care for a son, he ignored his mother's orders to forget it and escaped to Egypt. That's why he had so easily thrown all his savings into the trip.

And that was why the call to prayer on the minaret had moved him so. The passion in that song called to the kin spirit within him, in the language he spoke most easily: music.

But for all his passion, all his movement and dancing across the strings, no one seemed to feel what he did. No one else moved alongside him. Not his mother. Not his band mates. Not even, in part, his grandfather, who had grown distant with his fading mind. The grandfather who had filled his nights with stories, when faced with his disappointed grandson recently returned from overseas, simply smiled and said, although what Atem had done was bad, it was remarkable for a kid to have achieved.

But what had Atem wanted him to say? What had he wanted him to feel?

And for all his music, his mother and grandfather listened out of the pride and obligation of parents, not for a love of the sound he made.

" _Back, back, back to the minaret."_

 _Go back,_ something whispered to him. _Go back to that time when you stood at the minaret._

And he did. He closed his eyes and imagined himself there as he sang and played, yearning for passion. Yearning for a reason to his passion. Yearning for a purpose to cry out like that.

When the song ended with the last trembling note of his cello, he had his eyes open and was staring right at the light. His heart still trembled with uncertainty, but he didn't feel so afraid anymore of the yawning darkness.

That night, he reached for Tea's little navy book.

Even as he held it he had to stop himself from chucking it across his living room. To him, it represented everything that had decided he wasn't good enough. Even as he opened the cover he feared he had just opened something that would outline every reason why he was going to hell and exactly why he deserved it, for no reason other than for some dude to propagate his crack pot religion.

But it didn't start with damnation or the fires of hell. In fact, it didn't even start with God.

' _I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents…'_

He really did throw the book then. Talk about a disappointment. Where was the ground thundering statement that had moved Tea so much? Where was the halleighluias? The…the…

Sighing, he got up, went to where it had landed spread out on the floor, smoothed out the pages, and went back to reading.

Though his stomach stay clenched in anticipation for the condemnation, it didn't come. Instead, a story unfolded to him, told in the simple language of his grandfather's constellations and with the earnestness of a young man simply trying to do his best.

The conflict came from the fact that this Nephi's father was a prophet who had received a revelation that they had to leave Jerusalem, as it was about to be destroyed. While he, Nephi, followed his father out into the wilderness, his older siblings thought their father a vain, foolish man caught up with senile visions, especially given all the riches and friends they were leaving behind just so they could go camping out in the wilderness.

Already the similarities to his own situation seemed uncanny. Hadn't others thought that of Tea? Hadn't he? Why was she so willing to leave behind riches and family for a wilderness of unknown and nothing? Was it really just because they were crazy or caught up in a vain hope?

He read on, seeking to know why and how. And since Nephi had simply wanted to know the same thing, Atem found himself in his shoes, wondering, and curious.

When he finally raised his head to take a much needed bathroom break, he was shocked to find, not only had three hours passed without him noticing, but that he hadn't paid a single thought to the thirst for alcohol tickling his throat. That in and of itself kept him reading after he had finished in the bathroom.

But also, a strange sort of…burning desperation had taken up residence in his mind. If he was to find out the truth, if there was even a truth to be had, a part of him knew it would be found in this book for which her entire religion had been founded upon. In here he would find the key to understanding her, and maybe, making things right.

But when six o' clock rolled by, it had stopped becoming about Tea and getting what he wanted from her and became something else.

He had to put it down when Mai called to demand when he was planning to come downstairs for his health fitness meeting. But even as he left it behind, he found it hard to focus. Despite having not slept a wink all night, he felt wired. He had stopped noticing how much his insides gnawed for the yeasty after taste, and he hardly even noticed he was hungry until his fitness trainer pointed out his shaking hands. Mai stomped out to find said food, but Atem just kept moving, mechanically. People ran through his head, their voices earnest, their language simple, their different stories somehow revolving around something he still hadn't fully grasped. There was something wonderful, they said. There was something worth living and dying for. There was something…

He tripped on the treadmill.

Joey and Bakura laughed in what Atem hoped was good nature. The fitness trainer rushed to his side, but it was Tea who reached him first.

"Did you sleep at all last night?" she asked, once more displaying her uncanny observation skills.

"Not really," he muttered.

Even as her brow puckered up in that familiar expression of concern, the trainer reached him and started poking around his leg. A shout of pain later, Atem was sent home with a sprained ankle and strict instructions to ice it and take it easy for the rest of the evening, which he eagerly did with his book.

It wasn't till he woke up some time later with his face in the book's pages that he realized why he was so interested in a book about some dead Ancient American civilization. It was the story of his life, being told over and over again, just in different ways and with people of different names. He had no idea when the book had become so personal. Wasn't it supposed to be just some kind of Bible? Not that he had ever read the Bible, so he wouldn't know.

Moved by his ravenous hunger that had come to bite him in the butt for skipping meals, he ordered up some take out, changed out the ice pack on his ankle, and went back to his book.

That was another strange thing, he noted. He had never been a particularly avid book reader. Yes, he had been caught up in a good book before. No, he wasn't adverse to the idea of reading either. He had just always found other things to preoccupy his time, namely music or video games or screwing around with his friends.

And when he fell asleep with the book on his lap that night, the cravings for the numb bliss of alcohol had gone unheeded.


	41. Knowing

Chapter 41

 _'And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true…_ '

Atem pulled the spoon from his mouth, chewing his leftover orange chicken slowly. He considered the words again, frowning.

Underneath his fingers was the last page and navy blue back cover of Tea's book.

 _It can't be that simple,_ he thought, and pushed through the last lines. For one, loads of people had asked God if something were true, and they didn't get any answers, right? Again the conundrum of the fact that if there was such a thing as one true religion, everyone would have to know and there wouldn't be so many different religions in the first place. Not to mention there wouldn't be any atheists, because if it was as easy as asking God if he were there or any of that schmuck, everyone would know…

But even as he thought that, his eyes absorbing the small black text, the stories he had just read ran through his mind. Over and over again it was the same old story: people who had been taught of God and commandments turning around and deciding they didn't really care about the promises God offered, or the warnings should they disobey. Time and time again wonderful things had happened to these people—miracles, really—because of prophets moved by God—and again, Atem couldn't help but think of Tea and the miracle she had wrought in their band—and then, only a year or so later, completely turning against anything that even hinted towards God. Even when God himself came down the people had to be persuaded to his teachings, and after a generation had passed they too turned on him—why?

The answer, Atem realized, was that people simply didn't like being told what to do, by God or anyone else for that matter, even if it was for their own good. They didn't like feeling guilty or being told what they did was bad, especially if it was what they wanted to do. Not to mention there was a romantic glory to blazing one's own path, especially if it meant making your own definitions of what was good or bad. Being awesome and never changing, not for anyone, even God himself. Atem himself had felt that way.

Wait…had? Didn't he still feel that way?

Suddenly amazed at himself that he had just spent two days holed up in his apartment reading a Jesus book, he tossed it aside. Even as he did so, he caught a flash of writing on the last, blank page before it smacked onto the floor. Curious, he picked it up and opened to a note written in neat, blue penmanship.

 _"Atem,_

 _I know this book is true. I know that there is a God, that I have a purpose on this Earth, and that I'll get to be with my loved ones forever, even if death should separate us. I have followed the promise at the end of this book and asked of Him, and He told me it was so._

 _I also know that He is very much aware of you and treasures you more than you'll probably ever know. I stand by what I said. You are a wonderful, strong, honest, loyal man whose passion is the most beautiful, brilliant thing I've ever seen. Please, never give up on your music, and never give up on yourself._

 _I leave this with you in the name of Jesus Christ, and hope you'll find what it is you're looking for, no matter where it might lead you._

 _Tea."_

"Jee, don't you have a rule against writing in your own Bible?" he said with a shaking smile.

And then the smile fell away. His stomach was clenching and the same overwhelming need to know that had kept him up and reading wrapped about him. If he knew for sure—if he just prayed and got nothing—wouldn't that be evidence enough for Tea? Besides, there was plenty of stuff on the internet he could pull up. People today hadn't changed at all over the last thousand years ago when this book had been written, after all. There was bound to be some 'revilers' more than happy to pull up its faults.

He stopped himself again. That wasn't right. He was already thinking of the book as though it were true. There was no way that was possible.

Not to mention he had one other rather major problem.

He didn't know how to pray.

Sighing, he tried to put down the book, just to pick it up again to read that verse about finding out if it were true. He didn't exactly see the word 'pray.' It just said ask of God. But what other way was there to do that than to pray?

But God wasn't really there…right?

Atem wasn't so certain anymore.

Biting his lip, he got up, wobbled on his bum ankle—that was getting better—and went to find some food. After five minutes of staring at his fridge, he closed it, his gut too twisted up to decide what it wanted. He ran his tongue over the roof of his mouth. He clenched and unclenched his hands, which had gone cold.

This was it, then. He had reached the end of the book and still didn't know the truth. He didn't even have anything to show to Tea that it wasn't true. What he had just read hadn't solved anything, like he had hoped.

Unless it was true.

For some reason, it became less important to Atem that it being true would mean he had done some serious wrong in his life. In fact, there had even been something in the middle of that book where a father was telling his son that sins of chastity were second only to murder and denying the Holy Ghost—whatever the freak that was. It definitely backed up Tea's reason for taking Atem's lax approach to sex so scary serious.

Actually, if that book were true, then Tea hadn't been all that unreasonable at all.

And as he stared down at his sink, holding a glass of water he had only sipped at, he found himself scared. If it were true, then the giants that whispered to him at night had been right all along and he really had done something truly horrible to Rebecca, and to himself. All that guilt he had felt would hardly be enough to tell him just how badly he had screwed up.

Yet, for some reason, he was also afraid that it wasn't true, because that meant he had hoped and wasted two days of his life. But it also meant there was nothing. No God, no reason, no purpose, no hope or anything to look forward to, just the same gaping problem that he didn't want to live life the way he had been doing but didn't have enough reason to live any other way.

He found himself trembling and scoffed, irritated. But no one was in his apartment to see him act like this. No one knew that he had read that book. As far as everyone else knew, he had simply been doing everything he could to heal his ankle up before the concert. Joey and Bakura had been busy doing rehearsals and the like, but they had stopped by only to express their disbelief that Atem had spent all that boring time alone without getting drunk. This had somewhat depressed Atem, as it nailed home just how bad his problem was.

Even though he knew he was completely alone, he still limped to his soundproof music room and shut and locked the door behind him.

He knew what he was about to do was incredibly weird and uncool.

After taking a few steadying breaths, he gingerly kneeled on the floor and tried bowing his forehead to the floor like he had seen the Egyptians do when called to prayer. Then he jerked up and tried folding his hands—that's what they did in the movies, at least.

"Um…God…uh…" He cursed and got back to his feet. "This is stupid. He's freaking God. Like he's going to…there's no way…"

Hot in the face, flustered, and dismayed, he plopped down on the piano bench with his head in his hands.

How would he even know when God responded? God had numerous creations and bajillions of people praying to him every minute of every day, what could Atem do to get His attention? What even made him think he could get an all powerful beings attention, especially if he had screwed up as bad as he did? He was damaged property, stupid, cruel, selfish—hadn't Tea's leaving him proved that? There were probably nuns or, heck, people like Tea God would much rather spend time on.

Unbidden, a memory he didn't even realize he still had floated up to the surface of his mind.

Tea had been loopy off of Bakura's drug. But she had said something about wanting to hear his cello, to hear his prayer. Even as he remembered that, he remembered one of the first times she had paid his cello music a compliment, saying it was like a call to prayer—a sound up to the heavens.

Atem reached for his golden wood cello. Methodically, he went through the ritual of fine tuning, tightening his bow, trying a scale or two. Then, breathing down to his tight, cramped belly, and reminding himself that no one could hear or see him, he set the bow down, closed his eyes, and pushed.

Like it always had to his stage fright, the first, belly rumbling note soothed him. He melted into the notes, lingering as long as he wanted to on especially sweet notes, only stretching when the urge felt right. His throat loosened and he hummed to himself, easing himself into the song.

This he knew.

Taking hold of the confusing turmoil in his heart, he dug it up and pushed it into the strings. His fingers twitched into accidentals, then triplets, and then another slow drag across a pining high E.

 _God_ , he breathed along to the notes as he played the familiar call to prayer, imagining himself back in that dirty, dusty square, except this time kneeling down with all the other bowed Egyptians. His mouth opened just slightly, his tongue trembling in time with his hummed emotions. He played his pain, his weariness, his confusion, his disgust at himself, his want to be someone else, someone new, someone who didn't get drunk on an almost daily basis, someone who didn't hurt this bad just because a girl dumped them—a beautiful, wildly intuitive, caring, thoughtful girl with the musical talent of an angel and freckled legs to match. He played the strange hope and certain something that had gripped him as he read the book she had given him, and how he just wanted to know if it was real—if it was true, as Tea had said. He played his best interpretation of the dance of the Book of Mormon's stories, how they had just been retellings of his own story—mother, father, grandfather, stars, Egypt, blazing light, and the music, always the music.

And as he dug deeper and deeper, playing louder and louder, suddenly desperate that someone, anyone at all, would listen to him for once in his stupid damn life, an emotion bled out into him like fire. It blazed through him, making him tremble, causing the fingers on his strings to sweat and his bow to slip.

But he kept playing, because the music was telling him something now, clear and bright. His cello rumbled peace to him, told him everything would be okay. The heat wrapped about him, playing and singing over and over that he was okay, wonderful even, because he had done so well, he _was_ doing so well and was glorious to behold and had done a very hard thing, a very right thing, in pouring his alcohol down the drain, that he had done right to take a chance to understand Tea better and read the book—that he had done well to be humble enough to just try, to just do his best, which was more than most ever did, because he knew—he knew how hard it was for Atem, he knew, and he was so deeply- even dancing for the intensity of it-eternally delighted in Atem now—

The bow fell from Atem's fingers. Tears didn't so much as leak from his eyes as they did pour. He had no idea when the emotions and the music had suddenly turned into words in his mind, softer than the quietest thought, but piercing as knife.

"Oh my god." He gasped. "Oh. My God."

And he knew.


	42. Bouncy Elders

Chapter 42

The secretary told him Seto Kaiba was in a meeting, but that he could wait in the lobby to see if Seto had a moment afterwards to speak with him. So Atem sat down and did his best not to fidget.

Sooner than he expected, he was given the okay and was sent up on his own this time to that near-top floor framed in glass. It all went by much quicker than it had the last time he was here, even though his heels were popping like crazy and he couldn't seem to hold still.

Across the half glass hallway and through the doors was Seto Kaiba, who didn't look all that different from the last time Atem had seen him. Maybe a different tie, but little else. He was on his cell phone when Atem stepped in.

"I don't care if you have to cancel every appointment from here to February, I am not coming in for anything on Christmas Eve or Christmas and that is final. The next sorry soul to ask me will not only be fired, but smeared so badly on his report that finding a job outside of Burger King will be nigh impossible."

Atem shivered at the ice in the CEO's voice. He dared anyone not to.

After a few seconds of listening, Seto said, "Good," hung up, and swiveled towards Atem.

"What?" he asked ungraciously.

Faced with a clearly disgruntled Seto, Atem was beginning to regret his decision to come here. He couldn't just throw out something like this to him while he had a look to kill puppies.

Seto Kaiba raised an eyebrow. "Well? You've got three minutes."

Atem bit the bullet. "It's true."

"Pardon?"

"The book that the Mormons read—Tea's book—it's true."

"And?"

And? What did he mean 'and?' Didn't Seto get what that meant? He had been the one to egg Atem on into finding out whether or not it was true in the first place.

Even so, that wasn't the sole reason Atem had come here.

He forced himself not to start fidgeting his hands like a child and asked, "What do I do now?"

The tall man dropped his chin to give a look from underneath his eyebrows that could have begun a new ice age.

"You came all the way here to interrupt me on an especially busy day getting together _your_ concert for relationship advice?"

"You were the one who forced your way into my relationship in the first place."

Seto made an ugly scoffing noise and twisted back to the computer. "Don't you have friends for that sort of thing? Drinking buddies?" he gave a short chuckle at his own joke.

"I can't talk to my bandmates about this, or Mai," he said, than hesitated. "It's…it's true, and none of them will get that. They'll think I'm…it'll be way out of their depth…"

"Good Lord, this can't be happening. Okay, first, grow up and stop caring what other people think about you. Second, Mormons are ridiculously famous for their missionaries. I'd be surprise if they didn't have half a dozen of those zitty spirit scouts in the area. Here, I'll even—what do you know, I've already found a number, just like you would have if you'd used a search engine. But I forget, porn addicted rock stars don't know how to use the internet."

"That was a little unnecessary," Atem managed to get out, even as he wondered how in the world Seto had ever picked up that Atem had looked at porn—if he had. "And I'm not a porn addicted rock star. Could you just give me the number already?"

"Only if you swear never to come up to my office to ask stupid questions again."

"That implies that you're okay with me coming up to your office, as long as it's with intelligence."

The look Seto shot him before focusing on the sticky note he was writing on told him that would only be the case if Atem wanted to get his precious parts chopped off.

Grateful nonetheless, Atem managed to say, "You're mean, you know that?"

Seto swiped out the note towards him. "Get out."

Despite the less than polite attitude, Atem left feeling like he was starting to understand his producer a little better, and that he wasn't as bad as his bark made him out to be.

He called the number once he had sat down in his car and closed the door. A gravely, elderly tone answered. Due to that, as well as the man referring to the missionaries as 'Elders,' Atem had the image of a pair of older men when he set up a date and time to meet with 'their local Elders' at a local library. The last thing Atem needed was for Tea to see and think he was trying to make a show of converting just to get back into her good graces. Being mocked by Bakura and Joey seemed child's play compared to that possible outcome.

But, when he sat down in the library, large hat pressed over his head and swathed in a high collared trench coat, it was…well…two teenage boys that came up to him. He would have thought them a pair of creepy salesmen in their black suits and ties if it weren't for the tags on their front pockets declaring them to be the Elders he had asked for. There was even the full title of Tea's church under their names.

Hearing the same squeaky voice asking if he was Mr. Sennen, it just drilled home to him. Atem inwardly groaned, wishing he had given an alias. It just wasn't natural for him to think that way. It seemed dishonest, not to mention these were suppose to be messengers of God or something like that, you don't just lie…ugh, one of them had zits. Lots of them.

And his eyes had gotten really big.

"Oh. My. Fri—I have to ask, are you Atem Sennen from _Millennium Sands_?"

The kid's already squeaky voice hit a brand new pitch, bordering supersonic, and attracting the attention of a rather haggard looking patron in the books nearby. They were just lucky Atem had said the most inconspicuous table and asked the librarian to direct them here.

To his luck, the boy's companion got to him before he did with a light smack on the head.

"Idiot, can you scream that any louder?"

The younger boy was still smiling as he gave his angry companion a scolding finger. "Thou who calleth your brother Raka—"

"Oh, don't get started." Forcing on a toothy, but real, smile, the less zitty and taller companion stuck out his hand towards Atem. "I'm Elder Sparrow and this spaz is Elder Rummington."

"At your service!" cheered the squeaky elder in a sort of loud whisper—Atem couldn't quite grasp why they were called 'Elders.' They looked like they couldn't be any older than Tea.

Atem took the hand. Any uncertainty he had before about meeting them vanished as a familiar warmth flowed over him at the contact. Something about the air had become similar to what had been in his music room. Gentle, pervasive, and safe.

"Atem Sennen," he said quietly. "And I don't think I have to tell you to keep this quiet, right?"

The shorter elder had actually started to bounce up and down and squeal, though he promptly mashed his hands over his mouth to muffle it. His companion made an obvious effort not to look at him, even as his ears turned red.

"Of course. This is completely private. The zone leader will be curious, but we don't technically have to tell him."

"Good. Then you won't mind sitting towards the rest of the library to block any clear view of me, right?"

"Not at all," said the tall Elder Sparrow. He gestured to the table.

They had just sat down when the little Elder Rummington's hands popped loose.

"I can't believe I get to teach _the_ Atem Sennen—I'm sorry, can I shake your hand? I'm seriously freaking out, like enough to pee myself, I was totally your fan before it was cool to be—your cello is, like, totally wet-your-pants worthy!"

Elder Sparrow groaned and put a hand to his face. "Elder…"

Atem chuckled, though, and shook the kid's hand in good nature. A part of him wondered if there had been some kind of mistake. If this message was as true as the book he had just read, wouldn't it mean that teaching and spreading that truth was too important to give to a pair of spazzy kids like this?

But just as he finished thinking that, the young elder made an attempt to collect himself, and pulled a black bag onto the table. His companion straightened as well, and a change came over them. Not a dramatic one, but seriousness Atem hadn't seen before when the two had walked up to him.

"Do you mind if we open with a word of prayer?" asked Elder Sparrow.

"Um, uh, just one thing…" Atem fidgeted.

Please don't get weird, please don't get weird—God, this was SO WEIRD.

"What?" asked the short Elder Rummington.

"I…I don't know how to…pray."

Elder Rummington nodded, as though that was totally natural. Elder Sparrow, however, stared with high, dark eyebrows.

"Didn't you say you had already asked if the Book of Mormon was true?" he asked.

Atem resisted the urge to shoot a glare at the shorter elder, who he had arranged the meeting with and who was still bobbing his head like an imbecile. He shouldn't have said anything.

"Yes," he said, resisting the urge to hide his face in the collar of his trench coat.

"Can I ask how?"

"Um, well, I had a friend tell me once that my cello playing was like a prayer, so I…played my cello…to ask, that is, um…" Heat was crawling up his face. It was embarrassing admitting he didn't know something so simple to this pair of kids. "It is true, right?"

"Yes!" chimed the Elders at the same time.

The grungy patron glared at them again.

"And we'll be happy to teach you," said Elder Sparrow. "I'll give a prayer and you listen, and we'll explain it afterwards. Does that sound good?"

"I guess, but why do you have to pray anyways?" Atem's only experience with prayer so far seemed a bit too intimate to just do off the fly with some strangers.

"To help bring the Spirit to our teaching," said Elder Sparrow.

"To set the mood," said Elder Rummington, starting to bounce again despite his attempts to be professional. "Think of it that way, for now. We'll explain everything."

Despite his doubts concerning the teachers he had been given, his hunger to hear more bowed his head and folded his arms with the rest of them.

Over the next two hours, his original impression of the young goof offs melted away in the face of the things they had to tell him.


	43. Knowing Bach

**Sorry for the late update. I moved last weekend and my new place doesn't have internet, and I don't know when it will because internet cost money and so does being alive. Since being dead and using the internet isn't an option, here I am, outside my local church, leeching off the wi-fi. Gal, it's cold. I also don't have a car to get me to the library and warmth with wifi, so...**

 **As an apology, I'm putting up two updates today. Please enjoy!**

Chapter 43

When he had asked Tea how do you know if something was true, she had given some metaphor of knowing Bach's cello suite. She had also said to use reason. Just use your brain.

For starts, the book that had just dragged him through two almost three days with barely any sleep and was currently keeping his thirst for alcohol at by like nothing else was had been translated by a man around the same age as Atem and with only a third grade education.

The night after learning that, he read it again only to know, even as he read the words, that it wasn't possible for a poor farm boy kid to write something so intricate and so applicable to someone like himself.

He learned other remarkable things that sounded like that Bach cello suite all over again: sweet, agreeable, and true. Like how he was a literal child of God, and therefore, destined to grow up to be the same—if he so chose. Or how families were a core part of the plan in which people could become gods, or in short, find eternal happiness. There was evidence of eternity in every culture and religion of the world; evidence that each soul was precious, of unimaginable worth, and endless potential. There was a purpose to his existence. There was a reason everything was here. To give him and others what they needed to figure out what it was they wanted in life: whether it was to Godhood and eternal families, or a life somewhere else in the glories of the universe.

The more he learned, the more he began to understand what Tea had been telling him. She didn't just want someone to romance her or even to marry her. She wanted an eternal companion, someone who would help her stay strong in becoming the best woman she could become. Someone who she could trust to do the right thing, at all times, and it all places, and when it really mattered. Someone who she could take back home with her to her loving Heavenly Father.

And after feeling such overwhelming love as he played his cello, begging for answers, he couldn't think of anywhere better to be.

And since this is a story, not a religious book on doctrine to beat Jesus into your heads, I will leave it at that and continue with the story. Also, truth must be discovered by one's own efforts.


	44. Whatever Makes You Happy

**Here's the second of two updates I've posted up today as an apology for updating late.**

Chapter 44

The concert of the 23th drew closer. He attended every Triple A meeting Mai signed him up for, eager to begin a life sober. He kept his apartment clear of alcohol and avoided alcohol entirely, even declining offers to go clubbing. As night after night passed in soberness, the giants and monsters drew close enough for him to see that they were actually friends that he hadn't been able to make out through the distance. His study and pondering in this same clearness brought him to an painful, raw awareness of the wrongs that he had committed, not just to Rebecca or Tea or anyone else, but to himself. And whenever he faced the mountain and began to crave after the drink to blind himself to it, he'd open up the Book of Mormon again and once more feel the overwhelming peace and warmth, along with the almost imperceptible whispers of encouragement and love.

He attempted to go to a ward that started church at a different time than Tea's (his zitty, peppy missionaries were delighted to work with him, even standing by him when he shrouded himself in his trench coat and hat and more or less looked like a shady villain from off an old Western movie), in order to avoid her. He wasn't yet ready to bring to light that she had been right all along and that he had discovered it too, still fearing she wouldn't believe him. But on the rehearsal the night before their performance, the little smile she kept shooting him told him he might not have turned his face away fast enough when he was leaving the building the Sunday before.

But she didn't confront him on it. Perhaps it was because the nerves of a million strong coming to hear their music had gotten to her just as it had for all of them. Atem's heel had been popping like mad.

"Our other songs we've been playing for years," said Joey, tapping the side of a marimba with his mallet at top speed. "I feel like we've only been playing these songs for a month."

"That's actually about right," said Bakura dryly. "That's why we're only playing two from the new album. The rest are from the old, so stop that maddening tapping already."

The marimba mallet just switched to Joey's stool leg.

"More importantly, what's going on with you?" asked Bakura, dark eyes going sharp.

Atem said, "What do you think?"

"I don't know, that's usually the point of asking," said Bakura.

Think he meant his bouncing leg, he said, "Just nerves. I'll eat something tasty and play cello before I go to bed and be fine."

"That's not what I mean."

Atem shot him a questioning look from where he was stationed near the front of the stage. Bakura, however, just shook his head dismissivly and went to tapping around the keyboard. Feeling eyes on his neck, he twisted further just in time to see Joey avert his eyes.

Tea, however, was preoccupied with her guitar. Atem didn't miss the small smile on her lips, though.

That night, Bakura and Joey came knocking on his door, laden with bottles of his favorite mango rum.

Inwardly, Atem blanched and cursed.

Outwardly, he just sighed. "You know I'm on a the whole Triple A thing, right? That means no alcohol."

"It's only for tonight," said Joey, raising a bottle with a winning smile. "To help your nerves. Will make sure you don't get sloshed."

It would be so easy. Only one night. One night wouldn't hurt.

Then he thought of the baptism interview he was preparing for.

"Then I'll be stupid enough to get more," he said. "Seriously, guys. No."

"Can we at least come in then?" said Bakura, who didn't look like he cared either way. More fruity booze for him.

"If you'll leave the bottles out there, yeah."

"We'll take them back with us."

"You don't get it, Joe. Those things call to me. Leave them out here or I won't be able to concentrate."

"If they call to you—"

"It's called an addiction," said Bakura sharply. He had already put down his bottle. "Your hypocrisy is boggling, Joseph. Weren't you the one all pushing for him to leave the booze?"

"Alright, alright. Jeez, I was just trying to help the guy relax."

The fancy bottles of rum were left on the doorstep and his bandmates stepped inside. Joey threw himself on to the nearest couch, but Bakura remained standing, leaning against the fine granite counters with his arms folded across his chest.

"What made you stop?"

Atem frowned up at Bakura. "Calling it a bit soon, aren't you? It's only been, what, two weeks?"

Bakura's kicked a heel behind his calf. "Well?"

"Yay, didn't you get called up by Kaiba after you ditched out on your AAA meetings? Ooh, Kaiba, that's it."

Atem stopped himself from biting his lip and turned away. But omission was a form of lying, wasn't it? But he wasn't obliged to tell them about what was going on.

Just as he thought that, a story from the Book of Mormon rose to his mind. It was of a dream Lehi had where people had to use an iron rod for a guide to get through mists and darkness to a beautiful tree full of the most delicious, brilliant fruit that gave true joy. If one didn't hold to the iron rod, not only did they not find their way to the tree, but they could fall into various perils that lined the pathway. That, or find their way towards some spacious sci-fi building that floated in the air and was filled with all matter of people, who mocked and insulted the people who reached the tree. Some people ignored the jeering, but some people eventually turned away from the tree, ashamed, and were lost to the darkness.

Atem saw himself as one of those. If it was truth, why was he afraid? Or embarrassed? Tea hadn't been, had she?

"What you think'n 'bout?" asked Joey.

"About a tree. Or a story about a tree, anyways."

"That's…random."

"So you quit to try and get Tea to take you back," said Bakura like he had a bit of vomit in the back of his throat.

"How did you get that out of a tree?" asked Atem, ignoring Joey's pointed frown.

Bakura let out an explosive sigh and bent backwards of the counter, hands over his eyes. "You are such a dumbass. Seriously, what's it going to take for you to get it into your effed up brain that she's bad for you?"

"And you ain't too good for her," said Joey offhandedly, not looking at Atem.

"I get it, I get it, but that's not the case."

"Don't even try, Pharaoh," Bakura growled, now spread eagle.

"I'm not lying. Look, if I tell you what's really going on, will you believe me?"

Joey perked up at this, all seriousness. Bakura, however, did a weird backwards wiggle that got his rear end on the island counter as well and tucked his converse sneakers up against his buttocks.

"Yeah, whatever. Throw me a bone," he grumbled. "I think one of your kitchen lights is going out."

"Is this gonna be long? Should I get a bag of chips?" asked Joey.

Atem slapped a hand to his forehead. "You guys are so encouraging."

"Just tell us already so I can go party on my lonesome. Maybe tie myself to a bed. Yeah."

Trying not to picture why Bakura would want to do that, Atem took a steadying breath and stuck his hands into his back pockets.

What if he said it wrong? What if they thought he was a freak? What if they took something that had become so precious to him in such a short amount of time and stomped it under their feet?

He shoved it down, the old urge to be honest welling up in him. They'd believe him. And this was the right thing to do.

"I read the Book of Mormon and found out it was true."

"Book a whattie?" said Joey, who was already half off the couch, eyes to Atem's pantry.

"It's like…an addition to the Bible. It's what Tea's Church believes in."

Joey stopped and gave him a very odd look. Bakura didn't move or say anything.

"And you found out—hold on. Just what's in this Mormon's Book?" asked Joey. "Is it, like, thee thou and no marrying your sister and splitting a sea? Oh my god, did it tell you all their kinky temple secrets?"

"Wha—no! Where the hell have you been reading?"

"Nothing, I just hear they keep their temples pretty secret, that's all."

"That's news to me. No, it's…it's another story—or a collection of stories—that have to do with the people who lived on the Americas long before we ever came, and their, um, how they believed in Jesus."

Though his mouth felt clumsy and his tongue floppy, a familiar roll of heat, like an encouraging pat on the back, went through him. As he went on about some of the stories he had read, and inevitably, how he had come to experiment on the promise to ask God if it was true, the words came out easier and the comforting heat never left. He stopped worrying what they were going to say, because Joey was listening patiently, even after he'd pillaged a bag of potato chips. Joey asked questions here and there, but they weren't insulting, nor were they in mocking.

The continuing silence from Bakura worried him. He had yet to sit up from the countertop.

When Atem got to the part where he met up with the young 'Elders,' Joey burst into laughter.

"Did he ask you to sign his zits?" he asked.

Atem wrinkled his nose, but smiled. "Actually, they were quite professional after that. Well, as professional as two kids could be. You know what they told me? They said some farmboy who could just read and write was the one who translated the Book of Mormon, can you believe that? From a stack of gold plates! They said he saw God—"

"You can stop now."

Bakura had sat up, and his gaze was hidden behind his white fringe. He leaned a forearm on his knee.

"You don't really believe it," said Bakura, more of a statement than a question.

Joey shifted uncomfortably, swallowing a mouthful of chips. "Bakura…"

"No." He jumped down from the counter, and only then did he meet Atem's eyes. His gaze was cold, dark, and flashing with something that could have been betrayal or anger. "This is stupid. This is disgusting—you actually believed that load of shit? Ate it up straight from their assholes? How much money did they so kindly ask for in the name of the Lord?"

"Nothing," said Atem, oddly cool, even as his hands shook. "And it isn't some scam for money, they don't get anything out of it—"

"Oh, really? Ever heard of tithing? Ten percent of whatever you earn? All the members have to pay it."

Atem stiffened. "That's—they haven't said—"

"Of course they haven't. Next thing you know they'll have you bowing for the altar and chanting mantras. Get your head out of the clouds, dipshit."

"Bakura," said Joey, uneasily. "He can believe what he wants."

"This isn't believing. This is conning, right up there with get-rich-quick schemes and identity theft. Are you seriously going to start worshiping a kid who supposedly wrote God's book?"

"The Muslims believe something similar," said Atem quietly. "And that's the world's second largest religion."

Bakura made a nasty gagging noise. His lips pulled back. "Religion, then? And this has nothing to do with Tea's ass?"

"Don't talk about her like that!"

"Guys," said Joey, hands out.

"I'll talk about her however I damn please!" spat Bakura. "She didn't have to look at you after what she had done. If I hadn't left Joey here, you would have probably run off and killed yourself! And now she's got you thinking you're some great sinner and—"

"Just stop."

"Not until you wake the hell up."

"I'm fully awake. You're the one who's asleep."

The pianist threw back his shaggy white head and barked out a loud, humorless laugh.

"Yes!" he crowed. "Do tell me of your new homophobic tendencies—or did you forget about that? You're sick."

"It's nothing like that," Atem's chest was aching something awful, but at the same time it burned. He had it all wrong. Bakura didn't understand just how…just how nice and happy and safe…"You should read it yourself and ask God. He told me it was true, I felt him—"

"God talked to you?" Bakura put his hands to his face in mock awe. "The Pharaoh's a prophet now."

"It's not like that! If you'd only just try it out for yourself—"

"I have better things to do," he turned towards the door. "Wake me up when you're sane again."

But Atem couldn't leave it like this. Before he could think better of it, he leapt forward and caught his friend by the arm. His hand was cold and sweaty, but Bakura's skin was dry and cool.

"Bakura, please, for once in your life just hear me out. You were right, I might have done something stupid if you hadn't left Joey that night, but this has brought me out of it. You can't believe—it makes me happy. It's not scary, it's not bad, it's not any of that, it's—it's kind, it's wonderful, it's real—"

Bakura wrenched his arm out of Atem's grasp and shoved him. Atem fell hard on his butt.

As Bakura towered over him, sneer flashing his artificially sharpened canines and narrowing his black eyes to slits, Atem, for the first time, didn't think he looked cool or even scary. He looked done up, like a kid playing dress up.

Still, the icy hatred in his eyes and the lines of disgust wrinkling his face to his ears made Atem's blood run cold.

Bakura hawked back a logy and spat. The hot slime hit Atem's cheek like a slap.

"You're disgusting. You're vile. You're a moron. What happened to my friend? The one who just signed up to hate everything that I am?"

"I don't hate you!"

But Bakura had already slammed the door behind him. Glasses in the cupboards tinkled.

For a long, stunned pause, Atem sat there, Bakura's snot and spit sliding down his cheek and crawling down his throat. He could still feel the heat stronger than ever burning with him, reassuring him, but a hot, aching pain seemed to be crushing down on him, turning his lungs to steel and making it hard to breathe.

The facet snapped on and off. Joey appeared before him, crouched down with a rag in hand. There was none of the disgust or hate in his eyes, but there was a good deal of pity, which wasn't much better.

"Look, Atem," he started, just to trail off as he started to wipe the slime off Atem's face. He got it cleaned in a few swipes. Then sighed and plopped down on the floor in front of him. "That dude needs treatment. I think he's just worried about you, you know?"

"Worried?" Atem echoed.

"That you're being suckered. Don't take this the wrong way, but it does sound rather…iffy."

Atem just looked at Joey, his stomach sinking to the ground.

"What's so iffy about having a purpose? What's so iffy about knowing where you're from or even that you're not a mistake?"

Joey looked away again, and Atem got the impression he was feeling awkward now. Really awkward.

"Nothing, nothing," he said. Then he abruptly rolled to his feet. "What Bakura did wasn't cool at all. I'm gonna go talk to him."

"Joey…"

Joey didn't look back at him as he went to the sink and rinsed off the cloth. He did come over and pull Atem to his feet, but when he met his eye again it was fleeting and with an uneasy smile.

"Don't worry about it, kay? If it makes you happy, that's what matters." Joey gave him a pat on the shoulder. "Later, yeah? We still got that level on the PlayStation to beat. Oh, and thanks for the chips."

And like that, Joey was gone too, leaving Atem standing in his entrance way.


	45. Priceless

Chapter 45

Atem found himself at Tea's door. She opened it after his third knock, dressed in pink flannel jammies and with her hair wrapped up in a towel.

She hadn't ever looked so huggable as she did then.

She took one look at him then pulled him in.

"What happened?"

For what seemed like forever, he just looked at her, drinking in her big, beautiful blue eyes and the Dolphinius of freckles arching across her nose.

A great, gaping emptiness within him filled instantly, and he suddenly wondered how he had gone on for so long without her.

"Joey and Bakura," he started, hardly hearing himself. His throat was tight. Something was running wild around in his head.

"Sit down, I'll make you something." She ushered him to her lone red couch. A bit a ways from it, reflected against the dark glass of the open window, was her Christmas tree, glittering and decorated in the rose gold and diamond colors they had picked out. Evergreen garlands hung about the room, twinkling with the same strands of white Christmas lights.

He took the side of couch closest to it and just resisted pulling his legs to his chest like a child.

She wasn't long. Once the microwave beeped, she was over with a hot, steaming mug. He smelled clove and cinnamon and chocolate.

Then, with much hesitation, she reached out and touched his face, right where Bakura had spat on it.

Atem screwed up his face and clenched his teeth. This was ridiculous. He was told this would happen. It would happen to Tea. But more than that, he knew it would happen.

But her soft touch made his eyes burned. Suddenly, all he wanted was to hug her close and forget the world existed.

"What happened?" she asked again.

Haltingly, and clumsily, he told her of how he had found himself in that dark place, how Kaiba had called him up to his office to demand he use his brain, how he had eventually come to read the Book of Mormon and the words and impressions he had heard as he played a prayer on his cello.

He had only started into Bakura and Joey's reaction when the acidic, heavy doubt cut him short.

"Am I really such an idiot?" his voice broke. He swallowed hard. "Tea, am I crazy? Was I conned? Am I desperate? Am I…" he choked. The next words had to be forced out, and came with tears. "Am I wrong?"

Her expression fell.

"Oh, baby," she pulled him into her arms and held him tight. "Darling. Atem. No, you aren't stupid. Not at all. You're not crazy or desperate. And, I don't know if it means anything from me since I'm a bit biased, but you're not wrong or conned either. The gospel isn't going to hurt you or make you hate on Bakura. In fact, we're told to treat everyone with love and respect, no matter what they do or what they believe." She pulled away and rubbed the moisture from off his cheeks. Her blue eyes shone, reflecting the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree. Her summer breeze smile wrapped about him like a beloved blanket, rich with the scent of home and memories.

He thought he could see those summer stars again in that smile. Thought he could feel that warm, earthy peace of laying in the dark and looking up of the stories of heroes and gods.

"You're okay," she said, and she meant it. "You're more than okay. You're doing marvelous. Wonderful. You've done so many hard things in the past few weeks and shown so much faith, I can—I can hardly believe it. I wish I could be that strong. You're marvelous, Atem. Don't you ever, _ever_ believe anyone who tells you otherwise."

Then, she placed a feather light, chaste kiss upon his nose.

That broke him. He clutched her close and muffled his howl of misery into her shoulder. The past two weeks without her and the pain all came at once, bowling him over. All the guilt and regret, all the anger, all the loneliness and doubt and self-hatred and insecurity and all the fear of the monsters that had once haunted his nights and drove him to the bottle.

"I miss you," he said through her shoulder. "And I am so, so sorry." He had to suck for breath. "I can't tell you how sorry I am for…for all I've done to you. For the porn, for puking on your feet—"

"It was by, not on."

"-For the things I said, for the things I didn't say, for not being ready when you came, for making you feel like shit—I'm sorry, crap—"

She burst into laughter.

"You don't need to be perfect," she said through her mirth and he felt her lips on the top of his head. "I never needed you to be perfect. And I miss you too. I love you, my Atem. My wonderful Atem. Thank you for reading the book. Thank you so much. I didn't think—I was afraid to hope…"

And then she was crying too.

They were a nice, blubbery mess that eventually calmed down once they'd loaded up each other's shirts with the others snot and tears. He breathed her vanilla musk in deep, hoping to drench each cell in his body with it. The gut deep want burned in him—the want to stay on this couch with her, to stay in the moment where they were close enough to feel the brush of the other one's soul. And as he pulled back to look at her blue eyes again, he also saw how much he wanted to change. Not just for her. No. For himself. To become stronger. Better.

Happy.

"Give me some time before we…I want to do this right."

She rubbed her eyes and sniffed. "Time before what?"

"Before we…get back together or anything like that. As I am now, I won't make you happy, nor would I be happy." He bit his lip, fighting with himself to let go of her after so long of being apart. But he had to do at least this right before.

She seemed to hesitate as well. Even as he finally pried his hands off her shoulders, he saw her chin wrinkle and her bottom lip wobble.

"Okay." And the word was microscopic.

He tried to think of something encouraging, to give her the same reasons he was telling himself. But he had never been a very good logic person.

Gently taking up her trembling jaw in his hands, he brought his face to hers and, more carefully than he had ever touched a woman in his life, kissed her lips. It wasn't even enough to taste the salt of her tears.

"You've always treated me as though I were priceless," he breathed. "Now let me do the same to you. I'll become the man you need. I promise. I'm just not there yet. Please wait."

Her whole body had begun to tremble in his hands, and one of her hands wrapped about his wrist, keeping at least that hand close to comfort. Her eyes were bright as stars with her tears.

"But I'm so lonely," she whispered. "Does this mean you're leaving the band?"

He snorted loudly, startling her. "Of course not, and neither are you, I hope. We can still work together, right? I'll just need to get away for a bit after the concert just to…and until then, we'll have to…" He brushed a tear away with his thumb. "You know…"

And her wobbly lips gave him a tremulous smile.

"I know," she said. "Guess that means you have to leave now, then."

"Yes." He brought himself close again, though, snaking his arms about her waist. "Just one thing…before I go…"

The next kiss he gave her was not gentle, but nor was it rough. It moved off of every burning, tender feeling in his body. He wanted to convey it all through that one touch alone, to bring her close enough until she understood just how angelic she was in his eyes.

He wanted to protect her. He wanted to make her happy.

And she kissed him back with the same tenderness.


	46. Green Room

**Hey ya'll! Sorry about the late update again. I thought I would have my own internet on Monday, but then the internet peeps were really lame and didn't come to turn it on and I had to cancel the order and find some other internet and blabity blah blah-point is, HERE!**

 **Please enjoy and let me know what you think. ^.^ Your thoughts and reviews are my bread and butter. For reals, I'm not getting paid for this. And the ending of this story was actually kind of nerve wracking to write...**

Chapter 46

Atem didn't even see Bakura until before the concert, when he walked into the green room to be done up by Otaga's team, as Otaga himself was getting last minute supplies ready in another room. When Atem sat in the seat next to him, the white-haired man ignored him.

Atem didn't push conversation. Nor did Joey or Tea.

His throat hurt. He wanted a drink. It was getting harder to ignore, which just impressed on him the necessity to ignore it. He wanted to pull out the Book of Mormon to read, as that had been his coping mechanism at night along with Tea's texts, but not only had he not brought it, he didn't dare pull it out in front of the others.

So he looked to Tea beside him and tried to start up a light conversation about how she was feeling about the performance ahead. In response, she gave him a very pale, deer caught in the headlight look.

He sighed. "You're the last one out of all of us who needs to be nervous."

"How could anyone _not_ be nervous?"

"By being high as a cloud," said Bakura suddenly, who had tipped his head back so his hairdresser could more readily access the top of his head and had his eyes closed. "There's a pill for everything."

"I could lend you joint," said Joey gently. "Marijuana isn't really addictive, and it's not illegal anymore. I'd only give you enough to calm your nerves—"

"Don't you dare set anything on fire by me," broke in Atem, who had his own set of nerves to deal with and already knew what a nose full of disgusting burnt smell would do. And marijuana was the worst of it. Smelled like a freaking skunk—and it stuck _around._

"For Pete's sake, are you always going to talk about my joints like they're a freaking forest fire?"

"As long as I can smell them, yes. No burning."

"I was asking Tea, tight-ass."

"Well she can't either, it's against her religion."

Joey pulled his head back around from glaring at Atem and sniffed at his reflection in the mirror. "Guess you would know about that now, huh."

Despite Joey's completely unoffensive way of saying it, a very tense, awkward air spread over them.

"Not that it's bad," said Joey hurriedly.

The hairdresser had to stop Tea from nose diving into the table of makeup and hair supplies.

"Just let me hide in a hole," she groaned. "I'm done. I'm done with all of this."

Joey, who seemed to be wanting to make up for his untimely comment, fluttered a hand towards her weakly. "Aw, come on, gurl. The concert hasn't even started. You're gonna be fine."

"Not that," she said, and her gaze was too the ceiling. "All this tension and bullying about my freaking religion. Why can't you guys just get over it? And if Atem decides to believe it too, so what? It's not like it changes who he is. If anything, it'll just make him MORE him because he'll be even happier."

"That's a sickening amount of confidence in something you can't prove that you have there," said Bakura lowly. His dark eyes bored into her through the reflection of their mirrors.

"Well, shoot me!" she cried in exasperation. "Perish the thought I shouldn't say things politically correct enough for you. I'm not forcing my beliefs on you or anything, so what is your deal with me? All I've ever tried to do is get along!"

"Oh ho, your ignorance stuns even me," said Bakura, his sharpened canines beginning to show. "How would you feel if you had to be in the same room as someone who believed you would go to hell just because you love someone you shouldn't?"

"Probably about the same as an adulterer would feel in the room with someone who believed what they did was wrong."

Atem knew this built up aggression had to come up at some point. That didn't make his and Joey's exchanged expressions any less alarmed then the girls starting to speed up their hair jobs so as to get out of the line of fire as quick as possible.

Then Bakura stood up from his chair, a haunting, angry spectral even in his hokey hair-protector poncho thing. His eyes and teeth were all bared raw for Tea, who had turned her head to look on with a grim determination.

"Adultery and what I am is nothing alike," he said in a trembling, dangerous voice.

Atem scooted to the edge of his chair in case he needed to jump up quick.

"I don't even know what you are, and frankly, I don't care," she said back, all cool and level. "You're bedroom preferences are your own business, but I'm done trying to control whether or not my mere stupid presence makes you feel bad. This is your problem."

A hairdresser screeched as Bakura lunged forward, fingers outstretched like the claws of a pouncing lion. Joey sprung up at the same time Atem did and the funny poncho served as a good binding agent against the flailing nails.

"Get Mai!" shouted Joey at the stunned hairdressers.

"Get security!" Atem yelled over him. He had just dodged a sound kick to the gut.

All the while, Bakura screamed a long list of insults and demands that Tea kill herself, among other unsavory pursuits, and any way to express how worthy she was for his hatred. They are not written here in concern for the sensibilities of the audience.

Tea had stood up as well to get out of range and listened to it all with her back up against the wall, eyes oddly blank. Her hairdresser gaped in place for her. When the girl tried to step up and defend her against any of the things Bakura shouted, as Atem and Joey seemed too preoccupied with keeping Bakura from actually committing said atrocities, Tea reached out and stopped her with a quick jerk of her head.

Then Mai entered with all the fury of a level 5 hurricane. Bakura didn't even notice her until bundle of heals and furious blond curls slapped him so hard across the face, it left Atem's ears ringing.

"One more thing out of you besides music and your ass is fired, boy! Even piss in the wrong direction and your career is through!"

"You have no authority—" started Bakura.

"But I do."

Every head swiveled around to the open doorway, where Kaiba stood, tall and imposing as ever in a white designer trench coat and glacier blue eyes that could have cut a man in half with just a glance. Atem watched in grim horror as Kaiba approached the feral, reddening Bakura in his and Joey's arms.

"You can let go of him, boys," he said.

Atem and Joey did so and backed away as calmly as they could to Tea's side, leaving Bakura alone beneath the icy high beams of Kaiba's distaste.

"I've been hearing more than I care to about you from Mai," he said in a measured tone of an executioner. "Kind of hard not to when you scratched up the face of your band leader—"

"—that's not—" started Bakura.

"—and I get billed for an ER visit to remove a concoction of opioids out of my investment's system. And don't think I didn't hear about your little joke drugging the girl's drink. I let it slide in the past on your teammate's insistence that they were practical jokes, but I cannot afford to have a ticking time-bomb ready to throw a billion dollar court case into my lap. You have become an expense, Bakura Ryou, not an investment. Unless you can prove me otherwise in the next four hours," Kaiba's eyes narrowed. "You're out. Take it as a wakeup call from your high place that, without me or those bandmate's who have saved your arse more times than you'll ever know, you'd be nothing."

The end of Kaiba's words rung in the silence.

Bakura had bent his head towards the floor, hiding his expression behind a curtain of hair.

"May I say something in my defense?" he said bitterly.

"Depends on how long it is. I have an apple turnover that's about to get cold." Kaiba glanced at his watch.

"Oh, I'll be short," said Bakura. "It just seems logical to me that, if you're going to accuse me of becoming nothing more than an expense, you're overlooking the past mistakes of our great band leader. He is the reason our whole world tour was almost ruined, and now that he's gotten into a relationship with yet another of our bandmates—"

"As I thought, nothing worth clearing brain space for." Kaiba turned sharply and headed towards the door.

Bakura jumped, jerking his chin up in furious defiance. "Excuse me?!"

But Kaiba had already left, closing the door behind him with a sharp 'click.'

"You heard the man," said Mai, shoving Bakura back into his chair.

"I can't be treated like this! I'm a major part of this band to. Without me, this concert will fail, you hear me? And we'll be known as the most drama-ruined, pathetic upstarts to ever existed!"

"That's ditto to you, smart-ass. No one will want to hire a pianist who was said to cause it all."

"I am not-!" he cut himself short at Mai's lucid glare.

"No, go on. Who were you going to point out? Tea? Because of her religion? Certainly not Joey for smoking his pot, or Atem for loving whoever he damn pleases."

Bakura fell quiet, but his dark eyes didn't fall away once. He glared back at his reflection, unresisting.

The poor girl who was in charge of his hair and makeup hesitated, looking to Mai fearfully.

"So what will it be?" Mai asked with a manicured claw in his direction. "Your pride or your entire music career?"

After a tense moment, he finally looked away.

"Have it your way," he spat.

With that, everyone cautiously returned to their places.

It was a while until anyone dared to say anything. The hairdressers were first, tentively picking up a harmless conversation about what they were going to tweet when they got home and what other concerts they had worked at. Joey and Atem just avoided meeting anyone's eyes. In a way, Atem felt as though Bakura's screw up was his own, and that he and Joey had to share the shame of it.

During a brief lull in the hairdresser's conversation, Tea murmured, "Kaiba didn't have to be so mean about it."

"That's Kaiba for you," chirped her hairdresser, who was doing the final touches.

"That doesn't make it right."

No one had really anything to respond to that.


	47. Last Concert

Chapter 47

Atem and Joey tried to talk with Bakura before the concert to be sure he'd actually play his part without screwing with the rest of them. That had earned the two of them the black eyed promise of death before Bakura stalked off to hole up in the wings somewhere until it was time to roll up on stage.

Both of Atem's heels were going then, one after the other. He'd already thrown up out of nerves. Joey's face looked shiny with sweat, his lips thin and pale. Tea just looked up into the darkness, as though seeking strength there, her hands purple and shaking.

"He's not here," Atem choked out when he saw the nearby tech coming towards them.

"It's time," said the tech. The dark, thick-lipped man didn't smile. Anyone could have tasted the tension in the air, ripe with rust and salt.

Joey dropped his hair in front of his eyes as he swore beneath his breath.

"Maybe he's already there," said Tea quietly.

The three of them moved together up the steps to the back of the stage set. Each went to their own door. Atem followed the many streams of Tea's wind-like blue dress, trying to find comfort in her beauty. The gossamer fabric made her every movement look like floating.

Only a step away from the doors, she pivoted around back towards them. Joey stopped and headed back down, and Atem meet her at the bottom.

"I can't play piano like him, but I can copy the effects in the music with the guitar and my voice," her words rushed together. A thin sheen of sweat covered her upper lip. "If you hear me doing that, don't let up, okay? I need you to stick to the song as close as possible or it won't work."

"That's a lot, even for you," said Joey. "Look, the techies aren't going to leave us hanging. It's there job to make sure this works out, maybe they'll have a recording."

Tea faltered. "It's suppose to be live."

"And they'll get three-fourths live," said Atem, glancing over at the empty doorway at the far end of the stage set.

"Then why haven't they said anything yet?" she asked.

The three of them exchanged tense glances with each other before looking back at the dark-skinned techie who had been watching them, frowning. He had a hand to his earpiece.

"He's still here," he said to them. "Crazy whites on his way."

Joey let out short, tight laugh. "Crazy white. Not the best nickname I've heard, but it works."

"Get moving."

"Aye," they all said wearily, making their way back to their places. Every few seconds, Atem looked over at the door past Joey for signs of white hair.

Just as the prelude music started to rumble the metal and beams about them, a pale figure ghosted up the stairs, not once glancing at them. Joey seemed to try and say something to the other, but Bakura didn't respond.

Atem looked to his other side at Tea, who bit her lip.

The siren called, the mechanics clicked, engines whirled, and their doors opened. For better or for worse, Atem took a deep breath and stepped through the lazer lit fog.

The sound of a million voices crashed over him, ever like the sound of the ocean waves on high. He drank in the sudden rush of cold air, fighting to believe it really was the ocean and he could feel the spray on his face.

His legs hurt.

When he looked past the microphone into the darkness, however, he could see them. The lights weren't as blinding as he had grown use to them being, but illuminated the entire stadium in the dark hues of purple, blue, and orange. Faces as far as the eye could see, rising up into the sky, collapsing in on him.

Joey's drums started to tap for _Minarets_ , their star child.

Bakura's tinkling interlude didn't come. The tapping sounded out, alone and sharp in the abyss.

Atem, his cello's peg long enough for him to stand, automatically put his bow on the strings. He couldn't let it stay like this. He had to keep going, else Tea wouldn't be able to play. He counted, the measure came in, he pulled—

His sweaty fingers slipped.

So many lights. So much fog. And he couldn't hear.

 _God!_

It was a screech of alarm from his soul, up past the faces, up to the dark heavens.

In an instant his fingers found grip, his bow kept going, and the first tremulous call of his cello sounded out into the mass.

And in the sound of that long keening of his strings, he was there again, standing at the foot of the minaret. His strings cried out across the desert, calling to prayer all that heard. People were dropping all around him to press their faces to the ground.

With a jerk of soul, he imagined himself dropping down to the dirt as well. If he needed God at any time to perform a miracle, it was now.

Just as he realized he had forgotten what measure they were on and started to panic—he was the singer—he heard Tea's voice, ever sweet and high, singing his words into the night.

" _Round the coals of your desire, because no one ever cared for the heat of your fire—"_

The crowd joined her in a soft, cry like, " _Back, back, back to the minaret_."

And he heard her guitar tinkling away just like Bakura's keys, her own part completely abandoned. From behind him he could hear Joey, tinkling away at a symbol nearby to replace the synthesized affect of Bakura's keyboard too.

Atem's chest ached.

 _I'm sorry, Bakura. But we can't fall with you._

" _Burn out, crumble, left for scorn!"_ he finally managed to sing, eyes burning. The words came easily to him now, and as he sang them, he saw Bakura's future, and it brought tears to his eyes. As he came to the chorus, Tea's and Joey's voice, along with the crowds, joined him.

" _With your face to the ground!_

 _Back, back, back at the minaret."_

Half way through the third verse, Bakura's keys broke in with a furious blast of sound. The crowd roared, and Atem sucked in his first real breath.

 _Please don't make us do this without you._

Tea seamlessly flowed back into her background harmony, as did Joey. And for the rest of the song, everything was normal again. They were together. The lights, the ocean, the mix of shadows, all of it brought him high again into the heaven he remembered. As he pulled out the last Adhan at the end of the song, he inwardly thanked God, and sent up a prayer for a Bakura.


	48. Overdose

Chapter 48

The rest of the concert proceeded according to all their practices. Whenever he heard Bakura's keys it gave him a jolt of relief, as each time he feared he'd go back to sitting there in silence and Tea would have to make up for him, which she could never fully do. A guitar wasn't a keyboard.

And Bakura was his friend…wasn't he?

At the last belted, triumphant chord, Atem found his legs cramped up. He had to cling to the microphone stand in order not to simply fall. He did his best to keep on smiling, though, to keep on giving the show as though nothing were wrong.

"Thank you all! You're the reason this is all possible!"

They cheered, the lights started their flashing, and the smoke came out to announce their departure. He started to loosen his hands and felt his knees buckle. He grasped harder, but the stand just went down with him—

But someone had been waiting to catch him.

He turned, some crazy thought inside him hoping to see Bakura, but instead he saw Tea, who looked just as sweaty, elated, apprehensive, and exhausted as him.

No sooner did she get his arm over her shoulders than Joey came sprinting from the back for his other arm.

"Keep this up and people will think something's wrong with you," said Joey with a tired smile. Luckily, the techies had cut off their mics.

"Bakura?" Atem waved to the cooing, worried crowd as Joey and Tea turned him around to make their way out their designated stage exit.

"Did everything perfectly, which means he left first," said Joey.

"I'm sorry," said Tea. "This…this wouldn't've even happen if I'd never knocked on your door—ack!"

Joey had whacked her on the back of the head with the hand connected to the shoulder holding Atem up.

"Don't treat people's choices like they some force of nature with no will of their own," said Joey. "Put blame where it's due."

Behind stage, the whole crew not involved with winding down the show were waiting with fizzy drinks and cheering. Mai had hugs for them all, and even Kaiba was there, towering at least a head above the rest and giving Atem a solemn, short nod of approval. The poor sweaty bandmates were all but carried back to the green room to have their makeup and selves refreshed with everything from chocolate covered strawberries to sparkling apple juice. Alcohol was kept clear away, as they still had to meet with the few fans that had paid for backstage passes.

After that, everything sort of blurred past Atem in the buzz of the hype. One girl fainted at the sight of them. Joey had to stop him from punching out a guy who had snuck a kiss onto Tea's cheek. He signed a body parts and albums. Screaming. Bouncing breasts. The happy pleasure of Tea bumping in front of him in jealousy for everyone to see. Joey laughing long and hard between armfuls of fan girls as they took pictures.

Bakura didn't come.

As the night finally came to a close and the three of them were ushered into their limo, Mai slipped in as well looking a lot less happy than she had been after the concert.

"Well, looks like I got papers to fill out in the morning," she muttered.

"Have you seen Bakura? Is he okay?" Tea asked for them.

"Oh, he's fine. Ran out the moment he got the chance," she said with so much venom, Atem wouldn't have been surprised if some of her stray hairs had curled.

"Huh," Joey finished peeling off his shirt (something he did after every concert now), and sat back. "Usually I'm the one being immature. He can freaking hate us all he wants, but…dude, people paid for this. This is a job."

"Preaching to the choir." Mai pulled up her phone and her sharp, manicured thumb all but gouged out the screen of her phone as she dialed. She pulled up to her ear and started on about security and other busy-boss lingo.

Atem's gut twisted hard. Combined with his cramping calves, it was enough to make him swallow back a groan of pain. Wishing the night would just end, he tipped over and nestled his head into Tea's lap, not caring if it was bad or not.

She must have really liked him, because she didn't push him off.

They made an appearance at the after party long enough to give little thank you speeches, then Atem and Tea loaded back into the limo. Atem was so close to sleep, the oddity of actually avoiding a party for the same reasons that Tea did escaped him. Especially once he had his head on her lap again.

He was jostled awake at the front of their apartment. He was only half aware of Tea pulling him out of the limo and up the sidewalks to their apartment building. His brain had already gone ahead and fallen asleep on his deliciously soft bed.

Upstairs. Exhaustion worked almost as good as being drunk, without all the fun perks. So it just sucked.

It was a moment before he realized, not only had his hand gone cold since Tea had let go of it, he had stopped in the middle of a hallway. Tea, pretty, curvy, still in her blue dress of billowy tresses, was pushing open the door of apartment five.

His apartment was 7. Hers was 9.

Bakura's.

Jerking awake, he snapped forward to stop her.

"What are you doing?" he hissed, praying Bakura hadn't noticed.

"I have a bad feeling," her eyes had gone big with fear. "I just have to check. I have to make sure."

"Why is his door unlocked? They lock automatically."

"It wasn't shut all the way."

He bit the inside of his cheek, his mouth suddenly dry. Suddenly, he could feel it too. The familiar hot presence burning in his chest, but this time it eeked with alarm and wrongness, not the comforting peace.

She snapped on the light and he followed her inside.

Bakura's apartment had the same basic layout of all of theirs. Though also like theirs, it had certain installments to set it apart from the others. While Atem's had an island in the kitchen, Bakura did not, leaving the kitchen open and oddly empty. The walls had been painted a tasteful gray-black, and the floor was a mellow ocher. Heavy light-blocking drapes covered the windows, and the living room was surprisingly modern, posh, and clean.

Atem smelled something strange. Not quite burning. Not quite the musk of someone living there.

Tea went ahead down the hallway. He hurried before her, heart clenching faster and faster.

"That bastard better not be here," he found himself saying aloud.

He cut through the last of the darkness to the bedroom, felt for the switch, and smacked it on.

There, sprawled across his bed, next to a glass medicine bottle and a packet of used needles, a rubber band tight about his arm, was Bakura.

And he wasn't breathing.


	49. Missed Regret

Chapter 49

Atem had never really had a reason to be in the hospital before. Having a single mom and a grandfather who was a retired carpenter didn't exactly give you the best health insurance, and he'd never gotten sick enough to go anywhere that a visit to a family doctor wouldn't fix. Joey had half lived on the streets and tough as a horse, so even if he should have gone to the hospital, he stuck it out on his own. Bakura? Bakura had come in halfway through, and any hospital trips he had taken he kept secret, if they happened at all.

As he ran through the front doors, Tea on his heels and Joey to follow, he instantly discovered one time was enough. Everything from the indecipherably colored industrial carpet to the white walls and smell of hand sanitizer spoke of a place that worked in whispers and alarm. The ambulance with Bakura had gone round the back. It would be some time before they had a chance to see him, but Atem wasn't about to wait for a call.

He wanted to be with him. He had tried to get into the ambulance after him, but they had insisted he follow after.

So he made his way through the pale labyrinth, one hand running along the faux-wood handrail on the white washed walls, the other clutching tightly to Tea's. Long, florescent lights teased memories of movie-made horrors being split open on a table and an empty high school after hours. The green and blue scrubs blended one personnel into the next till they were blank faces in an even blanker town. He didn't know how long he wandered before a set of scrubs sat him and Tea down in uncomfortable, laughably cushioned chairs. He saw a blank faced clock watching him. More fake plants. A bleaching smile on the face of a magazine.

Then he saw his own face.

He pulled up the magazine a stared at his own face on the cover—a stranger's face, far more handsome and confident than he could have ever felt.

Posed about him, almost like furnishings to the room he made, were his bandmates, giving their best side. Tea's was nearly surreal with her beauty, and he frowned on realizing the length of her skirt had been photoshopped shorter and her breasts enhanced. Or was it her waist narrowed?

He tossed it aside when Tea reached over to see it.

"Probably best you didn't," he said, surprised at the sound of his own voice.

She hesitated, but pulled back and squeezed his hand.

He appreciated that she didn't try to comfort him with false promises.

Minutes passed along the face of the staring clock. He couldn't catch what they talked about. The ceiling had those square, porous tiles that were used in just about every building. He remembered sticking pencils through a few of them in Middle School. It had been Joey's idea.

As though summoned, Joey strode in, eyes bright, face flushed, and obviously on the tipsier side.

"Where's he?" he slurred.

"Please tell me you didn't drive here," said Tea weakly.

"I ain't stupid. Bakura?"

Atem swallowed to wet his throat, then shrugged a shoulder towards the double doors next to them.

"They haven't said anything to us since they moved him in," said Tea. "Do you know if Mai's coming?"

"Was I 'spose to?"

Atem sighed. He took a fistful of Joey's jacked and yanked him into the chair on his other side. "Sit."

And so they did.

Down the hall, at the corner where halls met, a phone rang at the nurse's desk. A woman's voice answered, her words loss to the bounce of empty space and white.

Atem's eyelids burned and itched, but even after he closed them and found a spot on Tea's shoulder for his head, sleep skirted the black uncertainty of his thoughts. Atem suspected it feared the possibilities waiting to be delved into, and there could be no illusion about these giants being friends. They were monsters, through and through.

"This is my fault…" came Tea's words. They were so soft in all that white space he almost thought he was imagining it, part of the assumptions of what would happen.

He heard Joey slap a hand to her shoulder and felt him shake her through their held hands.

"Don't make me s'plain why thas'tupid," said Joey. "I'm drunk."

"It's not your fault," said Atem.

"But if I had just stayed quiet…"

"If it wasn't that, it would have been something else." Atem sighed. "If there's anything I understand about being an addict, is that it's a way of coping with the natural shit life gives you. Besides, you did nothing wrong. You just stood up for yourself."

"He wasn't hurting anyone."

Joey sluggishly shook her shoulder again, and the movement rippled down to Atem's arm.

"Just don't," the percussionist groaned.

At some odd hour of the morning, Tea shook Atem out of a doze. A man in a white coat stood in front of them, his plain, tired face wearing a weary smile. Atem straightened, his mind wide awake while his body stumbled to keep up. On his other side, Joey rubbed his eyes hard, and beyond him was Mai, who must have arrived when the two of them had unceremoniously ducked out. Her hair was tied up in a messy ponytail and her face looked strangely childish without her usual layer of makeup.

"If you had found him just a minute later, I wouldn't be able to tell you this. He's going to recover." Then the doctor's wobbly smile wiped away as easily as a raindrop from a window. "But he isn't going to stay so if he keeps this up. We've found signs of meth and LCD abuse in his liver and heart, and the membrane of his sinuses had several perforations. There's also a pretty sizeable ulcer in the back of his mouth." The doctor's lined, black eyes narrowed on Joey and Atem. "I sure hope you boys aren't participating with him in these drugs."

Atem shook his head hard, while Joey threw up his arms as though the doc had been a cop instead.

"Hey, I'm just a cannabis enthusiast." At least he sounded sober when he said it.

"And I'm trying to become Mormon," said Atem. "They don't even drink alcohol."

"Did you two know about this?"

"Only since last month," said Tea.

But Atem looked to the floor with Joey. _They had always known he messed with something_ , but it hadn't been often, and Bakura always seemed so on top of it.

But the doctor just nodded. "Addicts often do a good job covering up their habit until it comes to this. I wouldn't beat yourselves up over it. Point is you know now, and hopefully he'll let you help him on his road to recovery."

Atem remembered the broken, thrown together beginning of their concert and hid his face in his hands.

"He should wake up sometime tomorrow. Best you folk head off to bed. It's been a long night for you."


	50. I Don't Care

**This is the second to last chapter. I'm not really happy with the last chapter, and it doesn't feel conclusive to me, so...I'm not sure what else there is to tell. Is there anything that you guys still want to talk about?**

Chapter 50

Bishop Strowbelt was a tall, narrow man with an easy, clean-shaven smile and warm eyes that helped alleviate Atem's nerves. There was not a whit of condescension of judgment in them. He wore a suit and tie much as the missionaries did, though his Looney Toons tie helped Atem feel a little better about his black button up shirt and red tie. It wasn't that he didn't have a suit. It was just…a tux seemed a little over the top for a simple meeting.

They shook hands. Bishop's Strowbelt's was just as warm as his eyes.

"I should refrain from mentioning the details of just how much Elder Rummington has been over the moon about getting the chance to baptize his favorite star, shouldn't I?"

Atem gave an uneasy smile.

"I'd, uh, really hope that this will just be like anyone else's baptism."

"Of course it will be," said the bishop, in a tone that said he was surprised Atem would think it would be otherwise. "You're just Brother Sennen, or do you prefer to be called Atem?"

"Just Atem would be fine."

"Alright, then. Would you mind if we started off with a prayer?"

Even though it was something he had gotten use to every time he met with the Elders, it still felt strange to fold his arms and bow his head with a stranger. Prayers still felt too private to him.

The bishop's prayer was simple, and conveyed the same warmth that his eyes and hand did. By the time it closed, a familiar, fire like peace had settled over Atem, and though he still sweated like crazy, he was more at ease than he had been all day. The little less than a thought—more than a feeling—whispered to him that everything would be okay. That somewhere very nearby was a Father spilling over with pride in his son.

As the bishop opened up the questions to decipher Atem's worthiness to be baptize, he couldn't help but think about the past month, or more specifically, the last week of December.

The first thing Joey had done on their entering Bakura's hospital room the next day was slap him across the face.

"Good thing you're in a hospital," Joey had seethed. "Because I'm going to beat the stupidity out of you. Do you have any idea what kind of night you put us through? What kind of jackass does that to his friends?"

"Oh? Is that what we are?" Bakura said without moving his face from where Joey had slapped it. Atem's heart had quailed at his broken tone.

And then, as though Joey's rage were spilled into him through some telephathic means, Atem found himself stomping forward to give Bakura's other cheek a smack.

"Guys!" Tea cried. "What is wrong with you?"

But they ignored her.

"Whatever gave you the idea that we weren't?" Atem snarled. "My religious beliefs have nothing to do with you and never will, because, newsflash, _you aren't some sort of god!_ "

"Big surprise!" added Joey. "But I'm sure waking up in a hospital might have verified that for you!"

"People! Seriously, calm the down!" Tea's hands pulled them both back. "Don't tell me this is some sort of man way of expressing worry."

"Worry? Oh ho, I'm not worried. I'm furious," said Atem.

"Ditto that," said Joey, but his voice came out thick with emotion. "Come on, white-ass, out of the bed. You've got a trashing due for trying to kill one of my best friends!"

"Save some for me, Joe," Atem took a step forward—

Just to find himself all but shoved into a wall next to Joey. The two of them stared at her, stunned at such an impressive feat of strength.

"ENOUGH! Both of you, sit. Butts to the floor, NOW!"

"We're not children—"

Her fierce glare choked the words in his throat.

Since it was the only smart option at that point, both Joey and Atem obeyed. He could feel the cold floor through his clothes.

Tea huffed, hooked her hands on her hips, and turned back to Bakura.

"Don't worry," she told the stunned pianist. "I'm only here to apologize. Then I'll leave you with the dogs to work out your issues. So…" her expression softened. "Bakura, I am so sorry for ever making you feel hated or belittled. I'm sorry for not keeping my mouth closed when we were all so worked up like that." She fidgeted a bit, as though hanging on a line to say, then seemed to decide against it and turned back to Atem and Joey. "I'm leaving now, but I'm going to be right outside the door, so if I hear anything violent you're going to have whatever this place has for security down your shirts, you hear?"

"Alright," said Atem quickly—this was his girlfriend after all.

Joey had no such emotional constraints.

"This is between us, Tea. Stay out of it."

Despite her initial determination to be angry, she faltered at that. Before it could completely show, however, the exasperation was back and she hid her momentary lapse with a roll of her eyes.

"Whatever." And she walked out.

Leaving the three old band mates in a tense quiet. Slowly, Atem stood up and patted off his rear, even though he was more or less certain there could be nothing cleaner than a hospital floor.

"Hopefully you get the idea anyways," he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

Bakura just looked out the window beneath his gray eyebrows, expression sullen and cheeks beginning to glow pink. He looked even paler than usual in the light blue hospital gown and sitting in a white bed. The hospital had a knack of sucking the color out of everyone, Atem had noticed.

Atem frowned. "Do you even care that we're here?"

"Sure," Bakura grunted.

"What kind of answer is that?" Joey all but jumped to his feet.

"The only kind I've got. What did you want me to say? Thanks for saving my life? Thanks for popping up and gushing me with the magic of friendship and love? Please. This isn't that simple."

"Kinda looks like that from here," said Joey dryly.

"Wouldn't you have done the same for us?" Atem asked, his chest suddenly tight.

Bakura's black eyes finally slid over to them, dull and blank within the cups of late-night shadows. The whiteness made them more prominent than ever, giving Bakura's eyes an almost bruised appearance.

"No," he said. "Because you would never have a reason to. Your guys' lives are roses and candy compared to mine, you could never understand what I have to deal with on a daily basis."

Atem felt the sting of that last comment, but, he figured, not as much as Joey. But when he snuck a glance of his taller friend, Joey was quiet, his gaze steady. But his fists had been clenched to his sides.

"Didn't think you're superiority complex went that high," Joey said, quite levelly.

Bakura's eyebrow twitched. "If that's what you want to call it."

"So being bisexual and ratted on by your parents for it is worse than being stuck in a gang and beat on by your alcoholic father? Not having clothes that fit you and an empty stomach or—"

Atem put a hand to Joey's chest and stopped his rising voice with a look. They held gazes for a breath before Joey snapped his jaw shut and dropped his chin.

"Screw it. If the little f#*&*$ doesn't want to be understood," and with that, he marched past Atem and out into the hall.

The door hissed shut.

Atem took a deep breath of the sterile air. He could just taste a hint of the cotton and bread smell he had always associated with Bakura. It struck him as strange that, even after pumping himself full of drugs, Bakura would still smell like his childhood friend and not like the pound of chemicals he seemed to be intent on becoming.

He shifted from one foot to the other. Bakura wasn't looking at him anymore, but back out the window, where the daylight came in cold and gray through the gossamer curtains. A snowstorm was in the works. Tea had been excited about cooking up a batch of homemade hot cocoa and having them all over for card games when the storm hit.

Bakura wouldn't be there. He wouldn't want to be.

Atem stuffed his hands in his pockets again.

"Bakura," It hurt. It hurt that the words to fix his friend wouldn't come. "What did I do wrong?"

"Really?"

Atem said nothing. He didn't think he could. He was suddenly too scared of the answer to.

But Bakura just snorted. "You haven't done anything, idiot. The world's just broken. And so am I."

"What, was there a time you weren't? What does a non-broken person even look like?"

"You're dating her," said Bakura, so dry it was like a slap.

"She's not perfect. She's human too."

"Maybe that's true. Then I wonder what that makes me."

At those words, the memory of cello strings and fire and warmth came to Atem. He recalled the overwhelming comfort of having heaven swathed about you, of being told you're enough, of being told you're loved and precious and of endless worth, no matter how much you may hurt inside.

And in that moment, with Bakura so pale and washed out before him, Atem thought his knees might give out with the want for Bakura to feel that same way.

"I know I said you weren't a god. But you're a child of one."

Bakura face palmed. "Oh, don't start."

"No, listen. I don't—I don't know what you're going through right now, man, but after that night when you left Joey at my house, when I was puking my guts and feeling…well I wanted to die. I didn't see the point to it all. I was hurting, and I suddenly saw that all life was—was pain. Agony, with stupid short parties in between. And then you die. So I figured, if all I was going to live through was partying, getting hung over, and then suffering because life's a dick like that, what's the point? And it wasn't like I was a nice addition to anyone's life either." He thought of his mother, who lost any chance for a career or a normal marriage with him attached to her hip. Or his grandfather, who had to come out of retirement to support Atem and his mom, and ended up injuring his health. Or Rebecca. Or Tea. Or Bakura.

"Is there a point to this?" asked Bakura.

"The point is I'd hit bottom and that's where I found God. He isn't some high and mighty thunder trying to control your life or out to be worshiped or even some faceless, omnipotent force just there to create stuff." Atem swallowed hard. Was he already screwing it up? "He's our Dad. A perfect Dad. Who just wants us to be happy, and he wants us no matter how broken we are. I…" Now his eyes were burning. "I went to Him when I didn't even think He was real, and I felt him, Bakura. He's there. I heard him too, you know what he said?"

"Dare I guess?"

Bakura's apathetic tone shook him, but Atem pushed on, knowing he had to finish this. "He told me he was proud of me. That I'm wonderful, priceless, and that…that everything was going to be okay. He told me he'd never leave me alone. And I know for a fact he feels no different about you. You may feel broken and that you're worth no more than shit, but that just isn't true."

"Are you done?"

Atem stared at Bakura through a thin film of tears. His dark eyes blurred into the shadows beneath them till his pale face was just a circle with two gaping holes in it.

"You…you don't care about anything I'm saying."

"Not really."

Despite how hot Atem had become while speaking, he shivered, as though a cold wind had brushed through. It was as though a great hole had opened up beneath him and swallowed him up.

How could Bakura not care about something that made Atem so happy?

Blinking away the tears before they could fall, Atem suddenly understood.

 _There's nothing more I can say now._

But back in the bishop's office, a month later, Atem heard himself say those words again. The back of his throat hurt with the effort, as though he spoke fire rather than a testimony. Knowing his own worth and purpose drove him on, and he could see his end goal, but it still left him awake at nights knowing what he had lost.

"There was nothing more you could have said," said the bishop. In those warm eyes, Atem saw a sympathy that went beyond simple understanding.

"But why does it still feel like there was?"

The bishop just gave him a rather pained, sad smile, and reached out to give his forearm a short squeeze.

"Because we always wish we could have done more to keep our loved ones from suffering. But, Atem, I can see no reason to keep you from the waters of baptism. I can feel how proud He is of you."

Atem returned the smile, this time from the heart.

"I can too."


	51. Ending

**Dear Readers (please read):**

 **I apologize ahead of time, but I do not feel comfortable posting up the epilogue. It isn't because of bad or abusive reviews-everyone has actually been quite polite and honest, and for that I am grateful. But the amount of readers who have dropped away due to being offended by the material and the amount of reviews that have expressed disgust in characters who I only tried to write as honestly as possible so as to show a great wrong that is commonly accepted in our world has discouraged me. My goal and dream as a writer is to create a break from the common stress of my reader's lives and to encourage and perhaps bring some hope, if I am so lucky as to be a giver of that. I never meant to offend, and the fact that a topic so precious to me is what is offensive...this is exactly why I held off writing this story.**

 **I'd like to believe that I am one of those strong people who can just write the truth and not care what other people think, but concerning this subject, I am not one of those people. I am not strong. I am not brave. It took a lot just to keep writing this story.**

 **But as I cannot put up the last chapter, I also cannot, in good conscience, take down this story. It may offend most, but if there is but one person out there who needs this story, who this story can help, than it will be worth it. If there is but one who can take a little happiness from this, then...then I can be okay.**

 **Since fanfiction forbids chapters that are just author's notes, I will include a short summary of an ending that I think will satisfy those purposes.**

 **Thank you to those who have read this far.**

 **LoweFantasy**

It is remarkably how unkind the world can be towards those who have become prisoners to drugs, both illegal and prescription. Their addiction makes them unstable, unpredictable, and very often dangerous, therefore they are refused from many homeless shelters, medical help, and even their own homes.

The business world is even more cruel.

Bakura was already pushing the door open on being fired from the band when he nearly destroyed their first number with his unprofessional boycott. The overdose was the last thin nerve Kaiba had for him. Part of Kaiba's wild success was his strict drug policies on the various productions he ran, and he had little belief in reformation. Bakura was ousted, his only option for continuing his career to find another producer who would be okay with his past.

Atem almost went with him. But Tea and Joey agreed that Bakura would probably not appreciate that, and in the back rooms of the plot, Bakura agreed with them. Atem had given the last offense. To Bakura, his band leader's attempt to help had only been a harsh kick while he was down. And since Atem couldn't remember all of that drunken night, he wouldn't remember Bakura's attempts to seduce him, and therefore no one would ever really know about the dark jealousy Bakura held alongside his prejudice towards Tea.

Tea and Atem were engaged some months later. Tea became even closer friends with Kisara Kaiba, and Atem found himself the unwitting audience to sides of his producer that the cold Seto Kaiba kept well hidden from the world, all to better protect his son and wife from the judgmental, nosy, and often destructive view of the media and business competitors.

When Tea and Atem got married, they sent an invitation to Bakura, who did not come. Joey was best man, and though he could not enter the temple with them-along with most if not all of the wedding party-he and the Kaibas certainly had a crazy reception/party to celebrate them after they came out. Watching Joey roll around in a happy drunken fervor, Atem found himself surprisingly not wishing he could join him, but deeply happy that he could appreciate every moment of that day in complete soberness. After all, no alcohol was necessary in making him feel sky high and more happy than he had been in his life.


End file.
